Polygenic risk for schizophrenia and non-pathological cognitive aging

Sammanfattning: Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder associated with cognitive impairments. Polygenic risk for schizophrenia (SCZ-PGR) has been associated with poor performance in cognitive tasks, both in patients and in healthy individuals. It has also been suggested that schizophrenia is associated with accelerated aging. This study examines the association between SCZ-PGR and accelerated non-pathological cognitive aging by performing longitudinal analyses using linear mixed-effects models. We hypothesize that higher SCZ-PGR is associated with accelerated rate of cognitive decline in healthy elderly. The study sample consist of 1746 Caucasian individuals with genetic data. Their performance in general cognition, episodic memory, semantic memory and visuospatial memory was tested over 25 years. SCZ-PGR was significantly associated with poor cognitive function but was not associated with cognitive decline over time with any of the cognitive domains. Our results indicate that genetics of schizophrenia may not be associated with rate of cognitive aging.