Effects of health status on word finding in aging.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate effects of health status on word-finding difficulty in aging, adjusting for the known contributors of education, sex, and ethnicity.


METHODS
Cross-sectional.


METHODS
Community.


METHODS
Two hundred eighty-four adults aged 55 to 85 (48.6% female) participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of language in aging.


METHODS
Medical, neurological, and laboratory evaluations to determine health status and presence or absence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Lexical retrieval evaluated with the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and Action Naming Test.


RESULTS
Unadjusted regression models showed that presence of diabetes mellitus was not related to naming. Presence of hypertension was associated with significantly lower accuracy on both tasks (P<.02). Adjustment for demographics attenuated the effect of hypertension (P<.08). For the BNT, a variable combining presence, treatment, and control of hypertension was marginally significant (P<.10), with subjects with uncontrolled hypertension being least accurate (91.4%). Previously observed findings regarding the effects of age, education, sex, and ethnicity were confirmed.


CONCLUSIONS
In this sample of older adults, hypertension contributed to the word-finding difficulty of normal aging, but diabetes mellitus did not.
Albert
Martin L
ML
Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, MA 02130, USA. malbert@bu.edu
Spiro
Avron
A
Sayers
Keely J
KJ
Cohen
Jason A
JA
Brady
Christopher B
CB
Goral
Mira
M
Obler
Loraine K
LK
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008875:Middle Aged; D014825:Vocabulary