Figure 3

Baseline GlycA level associated with future executive function declines in LMCI patients. Baseline GlycA level was associated with executive function composite score (EF) declines in late mild cognitive impairment (LMCI) patients at 3–9 years of follow-up. Spearman’s rank order correlation was performed on residuals of EF and GlycA, and the analyses were stratified by diagnosis status. EF at different years were adjusted for baseline EF level, screening age, follow-up year, BMI at the time, APOE4, sex, and education, treating participant ID as random factors; baseline GlycA level was log2-transformed and adjusted for medication, screening age, baseline BMI, APOE4, sex, and education. All significant results shown in the figure passed FDR correction using the Benjamini and Hochberg method (q = 0.2)⁵⁶. The analysis was performed on participants with different diagnosis statuses (Table S3), but only in the participants with LMCI was EF at continuous follow-up years negatively associated with baseline GlycA level and thus shown here. In addition, the LMCI-GlycA interaction was confirmed using a linear mixed model (p = 0.025, Table S4). Therefore, the analysis results for the participants with LMCI are shown here. A full factorial linear mixed model was used to show that there were no sex-GlycA interactions controlling DX (p = 0.864). BMI: Body mass index; DX: Diagnosis at baseline; GlycA: Glycoprotein acetyls; ID: Identification.