Associations of CR1, education, and occupation with high cognitive functioning in older adults: a Brazilian sample

The study was conducted with 122 community-dwelling older adults with or over 75 years of age, male or female, with no diagnosed neurodegenerative disease in Southern Brazil (see Table 1 for demographic data). Participants were recruited through social media, the distribution of flyers, the snowball method (Vinuto, 2014), and institutional partnerships (the Federal University of Paraná, a local church, and private health practice firms). All participants were required to participate in the study in an autonomous manner (i.e. with no aid from family members or caretakers), and were excluded from the analysis if they did not manage to score at least one correct response to any conditions throughout all cognitive tests.
Polymorphisms in the rs6656401 alleles A and G of the CR1 gene in the 1q32.2 chromossome were investigated. The genetic assessment was conducted with 60 participants. After the application of the exclusion criteria, 12 participants were excluded from the analysis, granting a final sample of 48 participants with genetic data.