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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

SO305

Association of structural and functional anticholinergic receptor activity with cognition in older adults at risk of dementia

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STRUCTURAL VERSUS FUNCTIONAL ANTICHOLINERGIC RECEPTOR ACTIVITY AND COGNITION IN OLDER ADULTS AT RISK FOR DEMENTIA

The association between anticholinergic burden and executive function is detected only in individuals exhibiting functional anticholinergic activity; measurement of structural binding alone cannot make this distinction.

The study examined whether a calcium fluorescence-based assay (CFA), which assesses functional anticholinergic activity by measuring intracellular calcium release following cholinergic receptor activation, directly reflects cognitive impairment, unlike the cell-based serum anticholinergic assay (cSAA), which measures structural binding. Serum samples from 276 participants at high risk of dementia, with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), remitted major depressive disorder (rMDD), or both, were analyzed using both cSAA and CFA; participants were classified as Group 1 if they exhibited functional anticholinergic activity on CFA and as Group 2 if they did not. Group 1 included 163 participants (mean age 72.5 ± 6.3; 92 women, 56.4%), and Group 2 included 113 participants (mean age 71.6 ± 6.2; 80 women, 70.8%). The two groups did not differ in cSAA activity (1.6 ± 1.6 versus 1.5 ± 2.0; t(274)=0.48, p=0.62). After controlling for age, sex, education, and diagnosis, executive function was negatively associated with both cSAA (beta=-0.210, p=0.006) and CFA serum RFU (beta=-0.195, p=0.011) only in Group 1; no association was detected in Group 2 (cSAA beta=-0.053, p=0.579; CFA beta=0.072, p=0.436). The between-group differences in these associations remained at the threshold of statistical significance, with F(1, 274)=3.10, p=0.079 for cSAA and F(1, 274)=3.42, p=0.065 for CFA. The authors report that, independently of structural binding measurements, CFA identifies individuals whose functional anticholinergic activity is associated with executive dysfunction, enabling a more precise assessment of anticholinergic burden. Note: The beta values in the conference abstract (-0.119 for cSAA; -0.006 for CFA, p=0.019) differ from those in the poster; the values from the poster were used.

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