Dominika Nika Seblova

Columbia University | CU · Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain

Background Long-term deterioration in the mental health of healthcare workers (HCWs) has been reported during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Determining the impact of COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates on the mental health of HCWs is essential to prepare for potential new pandemics. This study aimed to investigate the association of COVID-19...

INTRODUCTION Loneliness has a rising public health impact, but research involving neuropathology and representative cohorts has been limited. METHODS Inverse odds of selection weights were generalized from the autopsy sample of Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center cohorts (N = 680; 89 ± 9 years old; 25% dementia) to the US‐representative Health and Ret...

Introduction Czech health care workers recently experienced serious challenges to their mental health. After the COVID-19 pandemic that was extremely stressful, a war in Ukraine caused a flood of refugees that needed health care. Although the Czech Republic does not have borders with Ukraine, it welcomed more than 400,000 refugees in 2022. Objecti...

Purpose Previous research has highlighted the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers' (HCWs) mental health, yet protective factors remain underexplored. Emerging studies emphasize the importance of trust in government and interpersonal relationships in reducing COVID-19 infections and fostering positive attitudes toward vacc...

Background and objectives The mental health of healthcare workers (HCWs) may have improved after the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to model the trajectories of psychological distress, depressive symptoms, and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic and toward its end in HCWs in Czechia and investigate, which COVID-19 work stressors were associated wi...

Health care workers have been exposed to COVID-19 more than people in other professions, which may have led to stigmatization, discrimination, and violence toward them, possibly impacting their mental health. We investigated (1) factors associated with stigma, discrimination, and violence, (2) the association of stigma, discrimination, and violence...

Objectives Previous studies on sex differences in cognitive decline provide inconsistent findings, with many European countries being underrepresented. We determined the association between sex and cognitive decline in a sample of Europeans and explored differences across birth cohorts and regions. Methods Participants 50+ years old enrolled in th...

Healthcare workers (HCWs) were at increased risk for mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, with prior data suggesting women may be particularly vulnerable. Our global mental health study aimed to examine factors associated with gender differences in psychological distress and depressive symptoms among HCWs during COVID-19. Across 22...

INTRODUCTION We address the extent to which adolescent cognition predicts dementia risk in later life, mediated by educational attainment and occupational complexity. METHODS Using data from Project Talent Aging Study (PTAS), we fitted two structural equation models to test whether adolescent cognition predicts cognitive impairment (CI) and Ascert...

Background Structural racism has concentrated Americans racialized as Black in under‐resourced and disinvested neighborhoods. These same Americans experience higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Differences in socioeconomic opportunities structured by racism is a potential contributor to ADRD disparities. To investigate...

Background Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is a marker of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD) risk, as well as a reason why older adults seek medical help. However, whether the concept of SCD has utility in Latinx populations has been questioned because SCD’s inconsistent associations with cognition in this population. Measurement fa...

Background Minoritized groups experience higher stress due to structural racism and discrimination. These exposures have been linked to lower cognitive test scores and inflammation is a potential biological pathway underlying this association. Yet studies with multiple inflammatory markers in diverse populations remain limited. Method We assessed...

Objective Socioeconomic disadvantage is a chronic stressor associated with several biological markers of health (e.g., inflammation) as well as early-onset cognitive aging. Studies examining socioeconomic status (SES) and its link with health outcomes exhibit no uniformity in the way in which SES is measured and defined. Also, studies have found th...

Objective Social support may protect against Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), potentially through emotional or instrumental support elements. Black and Hispanic/Latinx older adults bear a disproportionate burden of ADRD. However, independent effects of emotional and instrumental support on cognition, a primary indicator of ADRD ris...

Objective Neuropsychology is in a nascent stage of understanding the mechanisms that link social forces, psychosocial experiences, and brain health. Discrimination is associated with lower quality of life, higher stress, and worse physical health outcomes in Latinx, but contradictory findings in prior research complicate our understanding of its re...

Background Inequalities in the regional management of healthcare systems can have impact on mental health of healthcare workers. We examined the relationship between regional economic management and depression among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Czechia. Methods We conducted cross-sectional analyses of 3 waves (2020 n = 1,282;...

Objectives Very early-life conditions are recognized as critical for healthy brain development. This study assesses early-life risk factors for developing dementia. In the absence of historical medical birth records, we leverage an alternative full population approach using demographic characteristics obtained from administrative data to derive pro...

Background Health care workers have been exposed to COVID-19 more than other professions, which may have caused stigmatization towards them, possibly impacting their mental health. This study aimed to explore experiences of health care workers with stigmatization, discrimination, and violence and their association with psychological distress and de...

The pandemic due to COVID-19 brought new risks for depression of health care workers, which may have differently influenced men and women. We aimed to investigate (1) whether health care workers in Czechia experienced an increase in depression during the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) which factors contributed the most to this change, and (3) whether the m...

Purpose Healthcare workers (HCWs) were at increased risk for mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, with data from previous crises suggesting women may be particularly vulnerable. The objective of the study was to examine individual and social factors that may be associated with gender differences in psychological distress and depress...

Introduction On average, minoritized racial and ethnic groups, including non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic adults, sleep more poorly than non-Hispanic White adults (hereafter, Black and White). Although racial and ethnic sleep disparities have been well-documented, few studies have investigated factors that may contribute to sleep disparities, such a...

We leveraged a unique school-based longitudinal cohort-the Project Talent Aging Study-to examine whether attending higher quality schools is associated with cognitive performance among older adults in the United States (mean age = 74.8). Participants (n = 2,289) completed telephone neurocognitive testing. Six indicators of high school quality, repo...

INTRODUCTION: The projected growth of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD-related dementia (ADRD) cases by midcentury has expanded the research field and impelled new lines of inquiry into structural and social determinants of health (S/SDOH) as fundamental drivers of disparities in AD/ADRD. METHODS: In this review, we employ Bronfenbrenner’s ecologic...

Neuroinflammation may be associated with global vascular dysfunction and damage. APOE‐ε4, a major genetic risk factor for late onset AD, is expressed in neuroinflammatory cells and may lead to increased pro‐inflammatory cytokine and nitric oxide production in response to injury. We examined the relationship of vascular dysfunction and damage with a...

Racism is a social determinant of health that operates at multiple levels ‐ interpersonal, institutional, structural ‐ producing stress and limiting access to resources that have dire biopsychosocial effects for historically marginalized communities. Research on older adults suggests interpersonal and structural racism, separately, are associated w...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cerebrovascular disease are the two most common pathologies underlying dementia. Loneliness is associated with faster cognitive decline and greater AD risk independent of pathology. Risk reduction efforts would benefit from knowing whether loneliness exacerbates the cognitive impact of pathology. Our objective was to ch...

State‐level socioeconomic opportunity disparities have been linked to health outcomes. We examined whether early‐life exposure to state‐level socioeconomic opportunity disparities between women and men influences the pattern of sex/gender inequalities in cognitive decline. Participants were 2,394 U.S.‐born non‐Latinx Black and non‐Latinx White wome...

Background and Objectives Exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with early-onset cognitive aging. Biological aging, the progressive loss of system integrity that occurs as we age is proposed as a modifiable process mediating this health inequality. We examined whether socioeconomic disparities in cognitive aging in mid-to late-life a...

Background: Higher education consistently predicts improved late-life cognition. Racial differences in educational attainment likely contribute to inequities in dementia risk. However, few studies of education and cognition have controlled for prospectively measured early-life confounders or evaluated whether the education late-life cognition asso...

Background Preliminary country-specific reports suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has a negative impact on the mental health of the healthcare workforce. In this paper, we summarize the protocol of the COVID-19 HEalth caRe wOrkErS (HEROES) study, an ongoing, global initiative, aimed to describe and track longitudinal trajectories of mental health...

Background The effect of family history on risk of developing late‐onset AD differs across race/ethnicity; however, the mechanisms underlying AD risk or resilience through heritability of genetic, environmental, and health factors are not well understood. Few large‐scale cohort studies have prospectively‐collected data of both parental and offsprin...

Background Peers influence adolescent behavior, educational, and health outcomes. Evaluating the influence of school‐mates’ cognitive aptitude on later‐life cognition is important for understanding the role of school segregation and tracking in establishing inequality. Yet, few studies have the data to study this. We used a national high‐school bas...

Background Increased education reduces risk of late life cognitive impairment. However, racial/ethnic inequities in cognitive outcomes persist at all levels of education. These findings suggest the need to evaluate whether race/ethnicity modifies the association between education and cognition overall and within specific cognitive domains. Method...

Systemic racism leads to racial/ethnic residential segregation, which can result in health inequities. We examined if the associations between residential segregation and later-life cognition and dementia differed based on segregation measure and by participant race/ethnicity. Tests of memory (n = 4616), language (n = 4333), visuospatial abilities...

Objective This study aims for a greater understanding of how older adults (age 65 and older) in Jackson County, Florida, are prepared for and cope with the effects of a natural disaster. Methods A multidisciplinary, international research team developed a survey examining: (1) resources available to individuals aged 65+ in rural communities for pr...

A family history of Alzheimer's disease (AD) increases risk for AD in an individual by 1.5-to 3-fold. Heritability of AD risk may be due in part to the aggregation of neurodegeneration and cerebrovascular changes with cognitive endophenotypes within families. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which cognitive functioning in mi...

Risk of dementia is both racially and spatially patterned. Less is known about sex/gender differences in pathways linking birth place to late-life cognitive outcomes in older non-Latino Blacks. The 1464 Black men and women included in these analyses were Northern Manhattan residents. Cox regressions revealed that Stroke-Belt South (SB) and Non-Stro...

Engaging in physical activity (PA) in adulthood has multiple protective health effects in later ages. However, unknown are the extent to which PA habits are laid down earlier in life and persist into adulthood, and the extent to which greater opportunities for PA during adolescence stem from differences in socioeconomic status (SES) which then affe...

Having more years of education is independently associated with lower mortality, but it is unclear whether other attributes of schooling matter. We examined the association of high school quality and all-cause mortality across race/ethnicity. In 1960, about 5% of US high schools participated in Project Talent (PT), which collected information about...

Background Longer education predicts better cognitive health, but it is unclear whether other attributes of schooling matter, or whether educational opportunities confer equal benefits across our society. We examined racial/ethnic differences in the association of high school quality with later life cognition among a unique cohort of older adults f...

Intervening on modifiable risk factors to prevent dementia is of key importance since progress-modifying treatments are not available. Education is inversely associated with dementia risk, but causality and mechanistic pathways remain unclear. We aimed to examine causality of this relationship in Sweden using a compulsory schooling reform that exte...

The Offspring Study of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Alzheimer’s Disease began in 2017 to identify biological and sociocultural mechanisms of disparities in cognitive function among middle-aged people with and without a parent with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). This article outlines the objectives and design of this prospective cohort study aimed at...

Introduction: We examined whether educational attainment differentially contributes to cognitive reserve (CR) across race/ethnicity. Methods: A total of 1553 non-Hispanic Whites (Whites), non-Hispanic Blacks (Blacks), and Hispanics in the Washington Heights-Inwood Columbia Aging Project (WHICAP) completed structural magnetic resonance imaging. M...

Central theories of cognitive aging propose that education is an important protective factor for decline in cognitive performance in older age. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of reported estimates of an association between educational attainment and change in performance in six cognitive domains (episodic memory, processing spee...

Studies from North America and Western Europe suggest stable or declining trends in impaired cognition. Nevertheless, data on changes in cognitive health from Central and Eastern Europe are largely lacking. Therefore, we aimed to examine changes in the age-specific prevalence of cognitive impairment in the Czech Republic, a country in Central Europ...

Background: Studies from North America and Western Europe suggest stable or declining trends in impaired cognition across birth cohorts. Objective: We aimed to examine changes in the age-specific prevalence of cognitive impairment in the Czech Republic. Methods: The study used two samples from the population-based Czech Survey on Health, Agein...

Central theories of cognitive aging propose that education is an important protective factor for decline in cognitive performance in older age. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of reported estimates of an association between educational attainment and change in performance in six cognitive domains (episodic memory, processing spee...

Abstract Background: Education is a key institution in our societies, and should prepare us for future by improving cognition and teaching us needed life skills. Education is associated with many aspects of life, including health. For example, there is hope that improved education may help to reduce the burden of dementia, which is a large public...

Background The continuous growth of the current dementia epidemic is contingent on the stability of age- and sex-specific trends over time. However, recent evidence suggests declining or stable trends. The aim of this study was to evaluate the real-world changes in the burden of dementia in older adults in Sweden from 1987 to 2016 by estimating age...

Background: The presence of gasping in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients predicts short-term prognosis. We performed a retrospective study to evaluate whether the presence of gasping at the time of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) arrival in the case OHCA patients of presumed cardian origin has any impact on six-month survival and/or s...

Whether the association between education and dementia is causal remains unknown. Our study examines this association in Swedish register data as well as the effect of a natural experiment prolonging compulsory schooling from six to seven years. Individuals born from 1920 to 1937 (n=1 373 936) were followed up in the National Inpatient Register fro...

Aim: To determine whether there are systematic differences in physical activity between residential areas after extensive control for sociodemographic factors at the individual level. Methods: Multi-level regressions of walking/bicycling, sedentary activities, household work and exercise were carried out in a representative sample of 68,303 adul...

Background: Cognitive and socio-emotional abilities are powerful predictors of death and disease as well as of social and economic outcomes. Education is societies' main way of promoting these abilities, ideally so that inequalities by socioeconomic background are reduced. However, the extent to which education serves these cognitive, social-emoti...

Background: Influenza vaccination uptake among target groups is a measure of vaccination campaign functioning since these individuals face the highest risk of post-infection morbidity and mortality Aim: To examine if the uptake of different types of influenza vaccinations differed between individuals with medical conditions and those without them...