A Study to Assess and Correlate Serum Lipid Profile with Reaction Time in Healthy Individuals

Abstract

Dyslipidaemia, metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus and arterial hypertension contribute to the risk of cognitive disorder and dementia. However very few and conflicting results are available with respect to the impact of lipoprotein ratios on cognitive functions in healthy individuals. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the association of lipid profile and its ratios with reaction time in young healthy individuals. 89 individuals (54 male and 35 female) with mean age of 31.20 ± 3.19 years were selected for this observational study conducted at AIIMS Rishikesh and written consent was obtained. TC, TG, HDL were measured by semi auto analyzer following the manufacturers’ instruction and LDL was calculated by Friedewald formula. Reaction time (simple and choice reaction time) was assessed using a software package, Deary–Liewald reaction time task. Association of various parameters was calculated by pearson’s correlation coefficient using SPSS version 23.0. Reaction time showed significant negative association with BMI (r = − 0.323, p = 0.002) in total study participants as well as with TG (r = − 0.440, p = 0.008) and TG/HDL (r = − 0.402, p = 0.025) in female individuals. From this study, it could be concluded that TG/HDL ratio, the superlative predictor of concomitant presence of cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome may be considered as a biomarker for assessment of cognitive function in young healthy female individuals.