Interaction of sex and insulin resistance with cognitive impairment in community-dwelling middle-aged and older adults.

Authors

Jung Sook Kim, Byung Chul Chun, Joong-Yeon Lim

Published in

Frontiers in aging neuroscience. Volume 18. Pages 1889416. Epub Oct 16, 2026.

Abstract

Cognitive impairment is a major global health challenge. However, whether sex and age interactively varies the association between insulin resistance and cognitive impairment remains unclear. This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the association between insulin resistance and cognitive impairment and identify sex- and age-specific interactions in community-dwelling adults.
The study involved 3,898 participants (aged 54-86 years) from the Ansan-Ansung cohort of the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study (2017-2018). Insulin resistance was assessed via Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR), with participants dichotomized by the median (1.97). Cognitive impairment was defined as a score of ≤23 on the Korean Mini-Mental State Examination score. Multivariable logistic regression was applied to examine the interaction and stratified effects of sex and age (≥65 vs. <65 years) on the insulin resistance-cognitive impairment association.
Among 3,898 participants (mean age 66.6 years; 55.5% women), 635 (16.3%) had cognitive impairment. A significant interaction was observed between sex and HOMA-IR (p = 0.04), whereas the interaction for age was not significant (p = 0.17). In stratified analyses, higher HOMA-IR was significantly associated with cognitive impairment exclusively in women aged ≥65 years (OR 1.37; 95% CI 1.02-1.84; p = 0.04).
Higher insulin resistance is a significant modifiable factor for cognitive impairment, specifically in women aged ≥65 years. These exploratory findings suggest potential sex-related differences in the metabolic-cognitive association, underscoring the importance of sex-specific metabolic management starting from midlife to help preserve cognitive health in later life.

PMID:
42964071
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 31 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.