Table 1. Summary of Research Subjects.

Frozen samples from non-watershed (inferior frontal cortex) and watershed (superior frontal cortex) regions of nineteen post-mortem brains were obtained from the Rush Memory and Aging Project. These individuals were all considered to be cognitively normal, and were categorized as having low atherosclerosis (n=9) or high atherosclerosis (n=10). The groups were indistinguishable in all measures, except for post-mortem interval and last MMSE score.

	Low Atherosclerosis	High Atherosclerosis	p value
Age at death (yrs)	86.1 ± 3.9	89.4 ± 6.6	0.2
Sex	22% male	40% male
Years of education	14.4 ± 3	14.2 ± 2.4	0.8
Last MMSE score (out of 30)	29.1 ± 1.2	27.4 ± 1.6	0.02*
Days since last MMSE test	341.5 ± 288.9	281.5 ± 282.6	0.7
Sample size	n=9	n=10
Postmortem interval	6.8 ± 1.9 hrs	5.0 ± 1.2 hrs	0.02*
APOE4 hets	4/9	1/10

Abbreviations: yrs, years; MMSE, mini-mental states exam; hets, heterozygotes for the APOE4 allele.