Prediction of 7-year's Conversion from Subjective Cognitive Decline to Mild Cognitive Impairment

Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is a high-risk yet less understood status years before Alzheimer9s disease (AD). This work included 76 SCD individuals with two (baseline and seven years later) neuropsychological evaluations and a baseline T1-MRI. A machine learning-based model was trained based on 198 baseline neuroimage features and a battery of 25 clinical measurements to discriminate 24 progressive SCDs from 52 stable SCDs. The SCD progression was satisfactorily predicted with combined features. A history of stroke, a low education level, a low baseline MoCA score, a shrunk left amygdala, and enlarged white matter at the banks of the right superior temporal sulcus favor the progression. This is to date the largest retrospective study of SCD-to-MCI conversion with the longest follow-up, suggesting predictable far-future cognitive decline for the risky populations with baseline measures only. These findings provide valuable knowledge to the future neuropathological studies of AD in its prodromal phase.