Illiteracy, dementia risk, and cognitive trajectories among older adults with low education.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether illiteracy was associated with greater risk of prevalent and incident dementia and more rapid cognitive decline among older adults with low education. METHODS: Analyses included 983 adults (≥65 years old, ≤4 years of schooling) who participated in a longitudinal community aging study. Literacy was self-reported ("Did you ever learn to read or write?"). Neuropsychological measures of memory, language, and visuospatial abilities were administered at baseline and at follow-ups (median [range] 3.49 years [0-23]). At each visit, functional, cognitive, and medical data were reviewed and a dementia diagnosis was made using standard criteria. Logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards models evaluated the association of literacy with prevalent and incident dementia, respectively, while latent growth curve models evaluated the effect of literacy on cognitive trajectories, adjusting for relevant demographic and medical covariates. RESULTS: Illiterate participants were almost 3 times as likely to have dementia at baseline compared to literate participants. Among those who did not have dementia at baseline, illiterate participants were twice as likely to develop dementia. While illiterate participants showed worse memory, language, and visuospatial functioning at baseline than literate participants, literacy was not associated with rate of cognitive decline. CONCLUSION: We found that illiteracy was independently associated with higher risk of prevalent and incident dementia, but not with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline. The independent effect of illiteracy on dementia risk may be through a lower range of cognitive function, which is closer to diagnostic thresholds for dementia than the range of literate participants.

Experimental and computational mechanistic investigation of chlorocarbene additions to bridgehead carbene-anti-Bredt systems: noradamantylcarbene-adamantene and adamantylcarbene-homoadamantene.

Cophotolysis of noradamantyldiazirine with the phenanthride precursor of dichlorocarbene or phenylchlorodiazirine in pentane at room temperature produces noradamantylethylenes in 11% yield with slight diastereoselectivity. Cophotolysis of adamantyldiazirine with phenylchlorodiazirine in pentane at room temperature generates adamantylethylenes in 6% yield with no diastereoselectivity. (1)H NMR showed the reaction of noradamantyldiazirine + phenylchlorodiazirine to be independent of solvent, and the rate of noradamantyldiazirine consumption correlated with the rate of ethylene formation. Laser flash photolysis showed that reaction of phenylchlorocarbene + adamantene was independent of adamantene concentration. The reaction of phenylchlorocarbene + homoadamantene produces the ethylene products with k = 9.6 × 10(5) M(-1) s(-1). Calculations at the UB3LYP/6-31+G(d,p) and UM062X/6-31+G(d,p)//UB3LYP/6-31+G(d,p) levels show the formation of exocyclic ethylenes to proceed (a) on the singlet surface via stepwise addition of phenylchlorocarbene (PhCCl) to bridgehead alkenes adamantene and homoadamantene, respectively, producing an intermediate singlet diradical in each case, or (b) via addition of PhCCl to the diazo analogues of noradamantyl- and adamantyldiazirine. Preliminary direct dynamics calculations on adamantene + PhCCl show a high degree of recrossing (68%), indicative of a flat transition state surface. Overall, 9% of the total trajectories formed noradamantylethylene product, each proceeding via the computed singlet diradical.