title: Effects of health status on word finding in aging.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, MA 02130, USA. malbert@bu.edu
authors.forename: Martin L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Albert
authors.forename: Avron
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Spiro
authors.forename: Keely J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Sayers
authors.forename: Jason A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Christopher B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Brady
authors.forename: Mira
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goral
authors.forename: Loraine K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Obler
mesh_terms: 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