Relationships between psychosocial stress, cerebrospinal fluid markers of Alzheimer’s disease, and cognitive function in middle‐aged and older adults

Exposure to psychosocial stress empirically associates with risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. Plausible mechanisms include (I) direct influence on AD pathology, and (II) indirect influence through cognitive reserve processes. Current evidence for modifiable determinants of amyloid and tau deposition is mixed, and stress has rarely been studied in this context. In richly characterized cognitive aging samples, we explored preliminary associations between (i) stress measures and amyloid (A), tau (T) and neurodegeneration (N) biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and (ii) synergistic effects of stress and ATN in cognition.