Iron Status at Perimenopause: Effects on Brain and Behavior

项目摘要/摘要 从月经初潮开始，到生育期，全世界有相当数量的妇女 缺铁性贫血(Iron deficiency，ID)或缺铁性贫血(Iron deficiency，IDA)。ID的负面影响包括DefiCits in 认知和身体表现。然而，在更年期和更年期之后，两者之间关系的性质 铁的状况与认知能力和大脑健康之间的关系要模糊得多，而有关这方面的文献 人际关系相当稀少，尽管有证据表明大脑铁的积累可能对神经起作用。 退化和认知衰退。 文献中一个耐人寻味的潜在规律是全身铁蛋白水平之间的反向关系 以及绝经前后女性在一系列记忆任务中的表现。这表明，闭经可能会对绝经期或绝经期前的ID或IDA女性的脑铁产生不同的变化 对那些不是的人。至少有两种相互竞争的可能性。首先，当失血停止时，脑铁水平 可能以与全身铁水平成反比的方式加速。对于ID女性来说，这可能会逆转任何 DefiCits可能是由于ID，但加速了铁沉积的负面影响(包括氧化应激) 特殊的fic脑区，包括那些对注意力和记忆力至关重要的区域。第二，更年期时大脑铁蓄积的速度可能与铁的状况无关。对于有身份证的女性来说，这意味着大脑 铁水平，尽管随着时间的推移而增加(从而最终逆转任何与ID相关的DefiCits)将保持不变 低于铁敏感的女性(isfifi，IS)，可能对人体有保护作用。 铁蓄积对脑组织和功能的不利影响。 解决这些可能性的能力取决于衡量级别之间关系的可行性 血液中的铁，大脑中已知与认知、大脑的特定方面有关的区域中的铁的水平 动态的认知工作和休息，以及行为测量的特殊fic方面的认知。这个项目 据我们所知，fi将首先评估评估所有这些关系的可行性。一组绝经前、围绝经期和绝经后的非贫血妇女，其中一半的人血铁水平较低，另一半人 都是超fi的，将为脑铁的区域特异性fic估计提供结构性脑部扫描。它们将被测试在 在大脑活动的同时选择性地参与这些区域的认知表现的行为测量 使用脑电(EEG)进行测量，并在两个休息时间段记录EEG。全 这将使fi首次对血液和脑铁之间的关系进行已知的定量表征 水平、大脑动力(工作和休息时)和行为，所有这些都与更年期的开始有关。这一横断面特征将为有效的fi纵向检查提供至关重要的数据 这些问题，并将代表着一个独特的贡献，现在稀疏的文学之间的关系 铁与女性晚年的大脑健康和认知。

Project summary/abstract From the onset of menarche, through the child-bearing years, a substantial number of women worldwide are challenged by iron deficiency (ID) or iron deficiency anemia (IDA). The negative effects of ID include deficits in cognitive and physical performance. At and following menopause, however, the nature of the relationship between iron status and both cognitive performance and brain health is much more ambiguous, and the literature on these relationships is quite sparse, in spite of evidence suggesting that brain iron accumulation may play a role in neural degeneration and cognitive decline. One intriguing potential regularity in the literature is an inverse relationship between systemic levels of ferritin and performance on a range of memory tasks in peri- and post-menopausal women. This suggests that amenorrhea may produce differential changes in brain iron for women who are ID or IDA at or prior to menopause relative to those who are not. There are at least two competing possibilities. First, when blood loss stops, brain iron levels may accelerate in a manner inversely proportional to systemic iron levels. For ID women, this may reverse any deficits that may be due to ID, but accelerate the negative effects of iron deposits (including oxidative stress) in specific brain regions, including those critical to attention and memory. Second, the rate of brain iron accumulation may have no relationship to iron status at menopause. For women who are ID, this would mean that brain iron levels, although increasing over time (and thus, eventually, reversing any ID-related deficits) would remain lower than those of women who are iron sufficient (IS), possibly conferring a protective benefit with respect to the adverse effects of accumulating iron on brain tissue and function. The ability to address these possibilities depends on the feasibility of measuring relationships among levels of iron in the blood, levels of iron in brain in regions known to be involved in specific aspects of cognition, brain dynamics during cognitive work and at rest, and behavioral measures of specific aspects of cognition. This project will be, to our knowledge, the first to assess the feasibility of assessing all of these relationships. A set of non-anemic pre-, peri-, and post-menopausal women, half of whom have low levels of blood iron and half of whom are sufficient, will provide structural brain scans for region-specific estimates of brain iron. They will be tested on behavioral measures of cognitive performance that selectively engage those regions while having brain activity measured using electroencephelography (EEG), and will also have EEG recorded during two periods of rest. All of this will allow for the first known quantitative characterization of the relationships among blood and brain iron levels, brain dynamics (both at work and at rest), and behavior, all relative to the onset of menopause. This cross-sectional characterization will provide the data that are critically needed for an efficient longitudinal examination of these questions, and will represent a unique contribution to a now-sparse literature on the relationship between iron and brain health and cognition in women in later life.