Tom Russ

The University of Edinburgh | UoE · Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre

Gene expression varies across the brain. This spatial patterning denotes specialised support for particular brain functions. However, general rules may govern shared spatial fluctuations in expression across the genome. Such information would offer insights into the molecular characteristics of brain areas supporting, for example, complex cognitive...

Background: Lithium, a mood stabilizer, is known to exhibit neuroprotective effects in animal models and may have anti-dementia effects. Aims: We used data from Scottish Mental Survey 1932, a population-based cohort study, to investigate the association between lithium in drinking water and dementia rate in humans. Method: Lithium levels in dr...

Background: Anticholinergic drugs block muscarinic receptors in the body. They are commonly prescribed for a variety of indications and their use has previously been associated with dementia and cognitive decline. Methods: In UK Biobank participants with linked health-care records (n=163,043, aged 40-71 at baseline), of whom about 17,000 had MRI...

Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR) syndrome combines slow walking and self-reported cognitive complaints. It is a quick and simple way of identifying individuals at high risk of developing dementia. MCR has not been described in a Scottish population to date. This study describes the prevalence and associated factors of MCR in a community-dwelling sample...

Discovering why some people’s cognitive abilities decline more than others is a key challenge for cognitive ageing research. The most effective strategy may be to address multiple risk factors from across the life-course simultaneously in relation to robust longitudinal cognitive data. We conducted a 12-year follow-up of 1091 (at age 70) men and wo...

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms could form part of an early cerebral small vessel disease prodrome that is detectable before stroke or dementia onset. We aimed to identify whether apathy, depression, anxiety, and subjective memory complaints associate with longitudinal white matter hyperintensity (WMH) progression. Methods: Community-dwell...

Background: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936) is a longitudinal study of ageing with well-characterised assessments, but until now, it has relied on self-report or proxies for dementia outcomes. This report describes a framework for clinical dementia ascertainment and its implementation. We report the prevalence of all-cause dementia and deme...

Objectives: Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR) is a gait-based predementia syndrome that is easy to measure and prognostic of dementia and falls. We aimed to examine the prevalence and risk factors for MCR, and assess its overlap with Mild Cognitive Impairment, Prefrailty, and Frailty, in a cohort of older Scottish adults without dementia. Methods: In...

Identifying predictors of cognitive decline in old age helps us understand its mechanisms and identify those at greater risk. Here, we examined how cognitive change from ages 11 to 70 is associated with cognitive change at older ages (70 to 82 years) in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 longitudinal study ( N = 1,091 at recruitment). Using latent-growt...

Background Anticholinergic drugs block muscarinic receptors in the body. They are commonly prescribed for a variety of indications and their use has previously been associated with dementia and cognitive decline. Methods UK Biobank participants with linked health-care records (n=163,043, aged 40-71 at baseline), for about 17,000 of which MRI data...

Background Exposure to air pollution is associated with a range of diseases. Biomarkers derived from DNA methylation (DNAm) offer potential mechanistic insights into human health differences, connecting disease pathogenesis and biological ageing. However, little is known about sensitive periods during the life course where air pollution might have...

Background Emerging research suggests exposure to high levels of air pollution at critical points in the life-course is detrimental to brain health, including cognitive decline and dementia. Social determinants play a significant role, including socio-economic deprivation, environmental factors and heightened health and social inequalities. Policie...

Background Anticholinergic drugs block muscarinic receptors in the body. They are commonly prescribed for a variety of indications and their use has previously been associated with dementia and cognitive decline. Methods In UK Biobank participants with linked health-care records (n=171,266, aged 40-71 at baseline), we calculated total anticholinerg...

Objectives This study aimed to determine the prevalence of Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR), describe associated risk factors for this syndrome, and assess its overlap with Mild Cognitive Impairment, Prefrailty, and Frailty, in a cohort of older Scottish adults. Methods A longitudinal prospective study using data from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LB...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

Background Exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with a range of diseases. Biomarkers derived from DNA methylation (DNAm) indicate a potential pathway to human health differences, connecting disease pathogenesis and biological ageing. However, little is known about sensitive periods during the life course where air pollution might have a...

Background: Previous studies on the relationship between anticholinergic drugs and dementia have reported heterogeneous results. This variability could be due to different anticholinergic scales and differential effects of distinct classes of drugs. Methods: Using Cox proportional hazards models, we computed the association between annual antich...

Inflammation and ageing‐related DNA methylation patterns in the blood have been linked to a variety of morbidities, including cognitive decline and neurodegenerative disease. However, it is unclear how these blood‐based patterns relate to patterns within the brain, and how each associates with central cellular profiles. In this study, we profiled D...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

With an increasing global ageing population, the psychiatry of old age has become increasingly important. This revised second edition remains a succinct manual on the practice of psychiatry of old age, providing an up-to-date summary of existing knowledge, best practice and future challenges for the specialty, from a global perspective. Written by...

Discovering why some people's cognitive abilities decline more than others is a key challenge for cognitive ageing research. The most effective strategy may be to address multiple risk factors from across the life-course simultaneously in relation to robust longitudinal cognitive data. We conducted a 12-year follow-up of 1091 (at age 70) men and wo...

We aimed to refine the hypothesis that motoric cognitive risk (MCR), a syndrome combining measured slow gait speed and self‐reported cognitive complaints, is prognostic of incident dementia and other major causes of morbidity in older age. We propose mechanisms on the relationship between motor and cognitive function and describe a roadmap to valid...

Background Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition that exists between normal healthy ageing and dementia with an uncertain aetiology and prognosis. This uncertainty creates a complex dynamic between the clinicians’ conception of MCI, what is communicated to the individual about their condition, and how the individual responds to the informa...

Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most robust predictors of health. The source of SES-health associations is heavily debated; one approach is investigating neighborhood-level environmental characteristics. Challenges include selection effects and the possibility of reverse causation: people choose their neighborhoods. Longitudinal twin resea...

Motoric cognitive risk syndrome (MCR) is a recently defined concept combining objective slow gait and subjective cognitive complaints, in the absence of dementia or significant functional impairment. MCR is associated with an increased risk for dementia but its prognostic value for other mental and physical health conditions is less studied. MCR is...

Previous studies on the association between the long-term use of anticholinergic drugs and dementia report heterogenous results. This variability could be due to, among other factors, different anticholinergic scales used, and differential effects of distinct classes of anticholinergic drugs. Here, we use 171,775 participants of UK Biobank with lin...

Data on dementia mortality are routinely collected by governments and used in health research. However, historical underrecording of dementia on death certificates has limited the utility of this widely available data source. Considerable effort has been invested in raising awareness of dementia, increasing diagnosis rates, and improving dementia r...

Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR), a syndrome combining objective slow gait speed and subjective cognitive complaints, is being used to identify older adults at high risk of developing dementia. Yet, uncertainty exists regarding the prognostic value of MCR for this and other major causes of morbidity in ageing, such as cognitive impairment and falls. Th...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a state between normal healthy ageing and dementia with an uncertain prognosis. This uncertainty creates a complex dynamic between the clinicians’ conception of MCI, what is communicated to the individual about their condition, and how the individual perceives the information conveyed to them. The aim of this stud...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition with slight decline in cognition, but unaffected daily functioning. Given its uncertain prognosis, communicating this in clinical consultations with patients is crucial. Our aim was to understand the impact of clinical risk reporting to individuals with newly identified MCI, focusing on changes in cogn...

In light of the COVID‐19 pandemic, it is increasingly likely that researchers will adopt home‐based remote administration of cognitive tests for the continuation of clinical studies. Yet, there are limited data on the reliability of remotely administered cognitive assessments compared to in‐person. Specifically, cross‐modal reliability of the RBANS...

We aimed to refine the hypothesis that Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR), a syndrome combining measured slow gait speed and self-reported cognitive complaints, is prognostic of incident dementia and other major causes of morbidity in older age. We propose mechanisms on the relationship between motor and cognitive function and describe a roadmap to valid...

Introduction: Recent research suggests that the experience of frailty progression may be heterogeneous, with latent subpopulations of older adults following distinct trajectories of frailty. We aimed to investigate this notion and determine whether certain factors are associated with the membership of these subpopulations. Methods: Data from 5 d...

Background: The use of prescription drugs with anticholinergic properties has been associated with multiple negative health outcomes in older people. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that associated adverse effects may occur even decades after stopping anticholinergic use. Despite the implicated importance of examining longitudinal patterns of a...

Previous studies on the association between the long-term use of anticholinergic drugs and dementia report heterogenous results. This variability could be due to, among other factors, different anticholinergic scales used, and differential effects of distinct classes of anticholinergic drugs. Here, we use 171,775 participants of UK Biobank with lin...

Background Little is known about effects of COVID-19 lockdown on psychosocial factors, health and lifestyle in older adults, particularly those aged over 80 years, despite the risks posed by COVID-19 to this age group. Methods Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 members, residing mostly in Edinburgh and the surrounding Lothians regions in Scotland, mean age...

Different brain regions can be grouped together, based on cross-sectional correlations among their cortical characteristics; this patterning has been used to make inferences about ageing processes. However, cross-sectional brain data conflate information on ageing with patterns that are present throughout life. We characterised brain cortical agein...

Background Growing evidence indicates that the residential neighbourhood contributes to the complex aetiology of mental disorders. Although local crime and violence, key neighbourhood stressors, may be linked to mental health through direct and indirect pathways, studies are inconclusive. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to synthetize...

Multi-scanner MRI studies are reliant on understanding the apparent differences in imaging measures between different scanners. We provide a comprehensive analysis of T1-weighted and diffusion MRI (dMRI) structural brain measures between a 1.5 T GE Signa Horizon HDx and a 3 T Siemens Magnetom Prisma using 91 community-dwelling older participants (a...

Multi-scanner MRI studies are reliant on understanding the apparent differences in imaging measures between different scanners. We provide a comprehensive analysis of T1-weighted and diffusion MRI (dMRI) structural brain measures between a 1.5T GE Signa Horizon HDx and a 3T Siemens Magnetom Prisma using 91 community-dwelling older participants (age...

Modifiable lifestyle factors influence the risk of developing many neurological diseases. These factors have been extensively linked with blood-based genome-wide DNA methylation (DNAm), but it is unclear if the signatures from blood translate to the target tissue of interest - the brain. To investigate this, we apply blood-derived epigenetic predic...

Background: Air pollution has been consistently linked with dementia and cognitive decline. However, it is unclear whether risk is accumulated through long-term exposure or whether there are sensitive/critical periods. A key barrier to clarifying this relationship is the dearth of historical air pollution data. Objective: To demonstrate the feasibi...

Identifying predictors of cognitive decline within older age helps to understand its mechanisms and to identify those at greater risk. Here we examine how cognitive change from 11 to 70 years is associated with cognitive change within older age (70 to 82 years) in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 longitudinal study (N=1091 at recruitment). Using laten...

Background: The genetic variant rs9923231 (VKORC1) is associated with differences in the coagulation of blood and consequentially with sensitivity to the drug warfarin. Variation in VKORC1 has been linked in a gene-based test to dementia/Alzheimer's disease in the parents of participants, with suggestive evidence for an association for rs9923231 (...

Background Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a heterogeneous disease with well-known genetic and environmental risk factors contributing to its prevalence. Epigenetic mechanisms related to changes in DNA methylation (DNAm), may also contribute to T2D risk, but larger studies are required to discover novel markers, and to confirm existing ones. Results We p...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of people's lives. Lockdown measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 have been more stringent for those aged over 70, at highest risk for the disease. Here, we examine whether home garden usage is associated with self-reported mental and physical wellbeing in older adults, during COVID-19 lockdown in...

Background: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) describes a borderland between healthy cognition and dementia. Progression to and reversion from MCI is relatively common but more research is required to understand the factors affecting this fluidity and improve clinical care interventions. Objective: We explore these transitions in MCI status and th...

Background: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936) is a highly phenotyped longitudinal study of cognitive and brain ageing. Given its substantial clinical importance, we derived an indicator of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and amnestic and nonamnestic subtypes at 3 time points. Methods: MCI status was derived at 3 waves of the LBC1936 at age...

Background: Air pollution has been consistently linked with dementia and cognitive decline. However, it is unclear whether risk is accumulated through long-term exposure or whether there are sensitive/critical periods. A key barrier to clarifying this relationship is the dearth of historical air pollution data. Objective: To demonstrate the feas...

(1) Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the lives of older people. In this study, we examine changes in physical activity, sleep quality, and psychosocial variables among older people during COVID-19 lockdown. We build on cross-sectional studies on this topic by assessing change longitudinally. We also examined whether...

Case presentation: A 38-year-old African American woman with a history of menometrorrhagia on previous estrogen therapy and a previously biopsied benign thyroid nodule with recent interval enlargement presented with symptoms of shortness of breath on exertion, an intermittent nonproductive cough, and right upper quadrant abdominal pain for 1 year....

Prescription drugs with anticholinergic properties are commonly prescribed and negatively impact physical performance, cognitive function, and increase the risk of falls and dementia. The prevalence of anticholinergic drugs is high in later life, when there is an increased risk of adverse drug effects. Recent, in-depth longitudinal analyses of spec...

Modifiable lifestyle factors influence the risk of developing many neurological diseases. These factors have been extensively linked with blood-based genome-wide DNA methylation (DNAm), but it is unclear if the signatures from blood translate to the target tissue of interest - the brain. To investigate this, we apply blood-derived epigenetic predic...

Inflammation and ageing-related DNA methylation patterns in the blood have been linked to a variety of morbidities, including cognitive decline and neurodegenerative disease. However, it is unclear how these blood-based patterns relate to patterns within the brain, and how each associates with central cellular profiles. In this study, we profiled D...

Background Air pollution has been consistently linked with dementia and cognitive decline. However, it is unclear whether risk is accumulated through long-term exposure or whether there are sensitive/critical periods. A key barrier to clarifying this relationship is the dearth of historical air pollution data. Objective To demonstrate the feasibil...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a term applied to people who have memory problems that do not impact on daily function. It is assumed that earlier identification of neurodegenerative disease will lead to earlier treatment which may be more effective and which could modify the trajectory of decline. Because of shortcomings in disease identificati...

Background The use of prescription drugs with anticholinergic properties has been associated with multiple negative health outcomes in older people. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that associated adverse effects may occur even decades after stopping anticholinergic use. Despite the implicated importance of examining longitudinal patterns of ant...

Background The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936) is a highly-phenotyped longitudinal study of cognitive and brain ageing. Given its substantial clinical importance, we derived an indicator of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as well as amnestic and non-amnestic subtypes at three time points. Methods MCI status was derived at three waves of the LB...

Background Little is known about effects of COVID-19 lockdown on psychosocial factors, health and lifestyle in older adults, particularly those aged over 80 years, despite the risks posed by COVID-19 to this age group. Methods Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 members, mean age 84 years (SD=0.3), responded to an online questionnaire in May 2020 ( n =190)....

Genetic variation in VKORC1 is associated with differences in the coagulation of blood and consequentially with sensitivity to the drug warfarin. Variation in VKORC1 has also been linked to parental dementia. However, it is unclear whether the relationship persists for the diagnosis in patients themselves, whether the association holds only for cer...

Background Research suggests that frailty is associated with higher inflammation levels. We investigated the longitudinal association between chronic inflammation and frailty progression. Methods Participants of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, aged 70 at baseline were tested four times over 12 years (wave 1: n = 1091, wave 4: n = 550). Frailty was...

Dementia is a major global public health concern and in addition to recognised risk factors there is emerging evidence that poorer pulmonary function is linked with subsequent dementia risk. However, it is unclear if this observed association is causal or whether it might result from confounding. Therefore, we present the first two-sample Mendelian...