ArticleBrain, behavior, & immunity - health2026
Severe infections, domain-specific cognitive vulnerability, and future infection risk in older adults.
Article in Brain, behavior, & immunity - health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Objective: Severe infections have been implicated in dementia risk, but their associations with specific cognitive domains and whether poorer cognition predicts subsequent infection remain unclear. We examined these associations in both temporal directions among older adults. Methods: We analysed data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Harmonised Cognitive Assessment Protocol (ELSA-HCAP), conducted in 2018 and linked to national inpatient records. Pre-HCAP hospital-treated infections were identified from 1997 to 2018; post-HCAP incident infections were ascertained from 2018 to 2024. Cognitive performance was assessed at HCAP using 21 standardized neuropsychological tests summarised into general and four domain-specific scores (executive function, memory, language, and visuospatial ability). Linear regression assessed associations between pre-HCAP hospital-treated infections and cognitive performance at HCAP; Cox models estimated associations between cognition at HCAP and risk of incident hospital-treated infections. All models were adjusted for sociodemographic, lifestyle, and health covariates. Results: Of 1159 participants aged ≥65 at HCAP (631 [54.1%] female; mean [SD] age, 75.6 [7.2] years), 351 (30.3%) had a hospital-treated infection before HCAP. Prior hospitalisation for any infection was associated with lower general cognition (β = -0.11 SD, 95% CI -0.21 to -0.02) and poorer executive function (β = -0.19, -0.28 to -0.09), with similar patterns across infection types. Lower respiratory tract infections were additionally associated with poorer memory (β = -0.20, -0.36 to -0.04). Cognitive scores were progressively lower among individuals with more frequent or prolonged infection-related hospitalisations, sepsis, or cardiovascular disease. Prospectively, over a mean (SD) 4.8 (1.9) years of follow-up, 271 incident hospital-treated infections occurred. Each 1-SD higher general cognition was associated with a 36% lower risk of any subsequent hospital-treated infection (HR 0.64, 0.53 to 0.78). Poorer performance across cognitive domains was associated with all-cause and bacterial infections, whereas only executive function was associated with viral infections, largely reflecting COVID-19 (HR 0.54, 0.34 to 0.85). Conclusion: Severe infections were primarily associated with poorer executive function. Conversely, cognitive vulnerability across multiple domains was associated with subsequent infections requiring hospital care. These findings support a reinforcing infection-cognition cycle in later life and cognitively tailored infection-prevention strategies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.