Estimating cognitive decline in longitudinal studies with high mortality and a long interwave period: A comparison of approaches and considerations around integrating end-of-life interview data.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Selective attrition due to interwave mortality can lead to bias in studies of cognitive decline. Long interwave intervals exacerbate challenges.

Methods

Using the two waves of the Longitudinal Aging Study in India-Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD) (N = 3546, from 2017-2019 to 2022-2024), we compared approaches to account for interwave mortality in estimating cognitive decline across age groups, including inverse probability weighting, joint modeling, and imputation of cognition before death using end-of-life interview data.

Results

All approaches produced steeper estimates of cognitive decline compared to estimates that did not account for interwave mortality. Imputations combined with joint modeling led to the steepest estimates of decline in

SUBMITTER: Nichols E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12662179 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature