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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1197
igaa057.1197
Abstracts
Session 2947 (Poster)
Depression and Anxiety
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
The Effect of Anxiety on Regional Brain Volumes in the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set
Burke Shanna 1 Li Tan 1 Grudzien Adrienne 1 Barnes Christopher 2 Hanson Kevin 2 DeKosky Steven 3 1 
Florida International University, Miami, Florida, United States
2 
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States
3 
University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, Florida, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”371 372
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Anxiety has been associated with greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and existing research has identified structural differences in regional brain tissue in anxious compared to healthy samples, but results have been variable and somewhat inconsistent. We sought to determine the effect of anxiety on regional brain volumes by cognitive and apolipoprotein e (APOE) e4 status using data from a large, national dataset. A secondary analysis of the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Uniform (NACC) Data Set was conducted using complete MRI data from 1,371 participants (mean age: 70.5; SD: 11.7). Multiple linear regression was used to estimate the adjusted effect of anxiety (via the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire) on regional brain volumes through measurement of 30 structural MRI biomarkers. Anxiety was associated with lower total brain and total cortical gray matter volumes and increased lateral ventricular volume (p<.05). Lower mean volumes were also observed in all hippocampal, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and right occipital lobe volumes among participants who reported anxiety. Conversely, greater ventricular volumes were also correlated with anxiety. Findings suggest that anxiety is associated with significant atrophy in multiple brain regions and ventricular enlargement, even after controlling for intracranial volume and demographic covariates. Anxiety-related changes to brain morphology may contribute to greater AD risk.