ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2020
Volunteering, polygenic risk for Alzheimer's disease, and cognitive functioning among older adults.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prosocial helping behaviors attenuate accelerated cognitive decline driven by APOE ε4.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- The neural basis of prosocial effort-based decision making in older adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Helping behaviors and cognitive function in later life: The impact of dynamic role transitions and dose changes.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Modeling the importance of life exposure factors on memory performance in diverse older adults: A machine learning approach.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- The Interplay Between Biological Aging and Volunteering Engagement in Predicting Cognitive Performance: Evidence From the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol Study.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2025Article
- Does volunteering reduce epigenetic age acceleration among retired and working older adults? Results from the Health and Retirement Study.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Types of Social Group Participation and Long-Term Cognitive Preservation in Older Ages.Innovation in aging · 2025Article
- The Concept of Prosociality in Later Life and Its Dimensions: A Scoping Review.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2024Article
- Does Helping Others Always Benefit Health? Longitudinal Evidence on the Relationship between Helping Behavior and Depression: The Mediating Role of Life Satisfaction and the Moderating Effect of IADL.Depression and anxiety · 2024Article
- Evaluation of the Polygenic Risk Score for Alzheimer's Disease in Russian Patients with Dementia Using a Low-Density Hydrogel Oligonucleotide Microarray.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Adults Older Than Age 55 Engage in Less Diverse Activities Than Those 18 Years Ago.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2023Article
- What Can Economics Say about Alzheimer's Disease?Journal of economic literature · 2023Article
- Modern Approaches to the Diagnosis of Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease: A Narrative Literature Review.Consortium psychiatricum · 2023Review
- Area-Level Infant Mortality Exposure in Early Life and Alzheimer's Disease Mortality: Examining Variation Based on Age, Sex, and Place of Birth.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2023Article
- Does Voluntary Work Contribute to Cognitive Performance? - An International Systematic Review.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2023Review
- Volunteering and Changes in Cardiovascular Biomarkers: Longitudinal Evidence From the Health and Retirement Study.Innovation in aging · 2023Article
- The health advantage of volunteering is larger for older and less healthy volunteers in Europe: a mega-analysis.European journal of ageing · 2022Article
- "Our focus is on illness and loneliness": Volunteer work engagement, compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, self-care and motivations to volunteer.Health & social care in the community · 2022Article
- Markers of kidney function, genetic variation related to cognitive function, and cognitive performance in the UK Biobank.BMC nephrology · 2022Article
- Polygenic Score Models for Alzheimer's Disease: From Research to Clinical Applications.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveIn the context of the public health burden posed by increases in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) prevalence around the globe and the related research efforts to identify modifiable risk factors for the disease, we sought to provide an empirical test of earlier claims that volunteering may be considered as a health intervention that could help to prevent or delay the onset of AD.
methodUsing nine waves of panel data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (n=9,697), we examined whether volunteering conferred cognitive health benefits in later life and whether volunteering served a gene-regulatory function to help alleviate cognitive decline associated with polygenic risk for AD. Multilevel models were used to estimate associations between volunteering, polygenic risk for AD, and cognitive functioning over time.
resultsWe found robust within-person associations between volunteering (assessed as volunteer status and time commitment) and cognitive functioning over time, such that volunteering was associated with higher levels of cognitive functioning and slower cognitive decline. The findings also provided evidence that the within-person associations for volunteering and cognitive decline were more pronounced for older adults at higher genetic risk for developing AD.
conclusionsOur findings are in line with a growing body of theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence suggesting that prosocial behaviors are directly associated with biological systems and may modify gene regulation to confer health benefits. The analytic approach taken in this study also provided a useful framework for investigating the effectiveness of other modifiable risk factors that vary over time in the context of cognitive decline related to genetic risk for AD.
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