Parity and dementia risk: Investigating the associations of number of biological children and cognitive and behavioural impairment in a Canadian sample
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The number of successful pregnancies (i.e., parity), is a sex-specific factor that may influence susceptibility to cognitive decline and dementia. Evidence suggests a possible non-linear relationship between parity and risk for cognitive decline, although findings are inconsistent. Beyond well-appreciated later-life cognitive changes, later-life behavioural and personality changes, i.e., mild behavioral impairment (MBI), are also linked to greater dementia risk. However, the relationship between pregnancy history, cognition, and MBI symptoms remains unexplored. This study investigated these associations. METHOD: Participant data were from the Canadian Platform for Research Online to Investigate Health, Quality of Life, Cognition, Behaviour, Function, and Caregiving in Aging (CAN-PROTECT) study. The cohort comprised 1,946 females (mean age 63.1±9.0), with 1,477 reporting at least one biological child (range of children = 1-5+; nulliparity=469). Number of completed pregnancies were operationalized as the number of biological children. Cognition was assessed using the Revised Everyday Cognition (ECog-II) scale. MBI symptoms were measured with the Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI-C). Higher ECog-II and MBI-C scores both indicate greater severity. Negative-binomial regression models examined the associations between the number of biological children and ECog-II and MBI-C scores. Secondary analyses compared females with at least one biological child to those with none. All models were adjusted for age, education, ethnic origin, and age at first childbirth. RESULTS: Having more biological children was associated with lower ECog-II scores (b=-8.42, 95%CI [-14.01, -2.45], p = .058). While participants with more biological children also tended to have lower MBI-C scores, with a similar magnitude and direction of effect, this association was not statistically significant (b=-6.97, 95%CI [-14.31, 0.99], p = .08). In contrast, having at least one biological child (versus none) was not significantly associated with ECog-II (b=-0.25, 95%CI [-9.578, 9.91], p = .96), but was linked with lower MBI-C scores (b=-18.37, 95%CI [-28.54, -6.74], p = .002), with a great difference in effect size between cognition and behaviour. CONCLUSION: Parity number was associated with better cognition and trended toward lower MBI symptom severity. Parity status was linked to lower MBI symptom severity but not fewer cognitive symptoms. These findings suggest that both parity status and number of biological children may affect later-life cognitive and behavioural health.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".