Administrative Supplement: Feasibility of Implementing Time-Restricted Eating in Women with Mild Cognitive Impairment

Project Summary Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disease affecting 6.5 million Americans above the age of 65. Currently, no pharmacological therapy prevents AD or markedly slows the progression to severe dementia. Clinical studies show that circadian rhythm and sleep disruption are associated with cognitive impairment and preclinical markers of AD. Thus, therapeutics that improve circadian rhythms and sleep may prevent AD development and progression. Numerous preclinical and clinical studies have shown that time- restricted eating (TRE), a circadian behavioral intervention that aligns food intake to the active phase, improves cardiometabolic health outcomes. Recent studies have shown that TRE can also improve cognition. Mistimed feeding in mice impaired learning and memory and TRE reversed this cognitive impairment. A study in humans showed that individuals who adhered to TRE were less likely to have cognitive impairment compared to those who consumed meals with no time restrictions. Thus, TRE is a promising intervention strategy for ADRD, but no study has investigated its efficacy at improving cognition in cognitively impaired individuals. A first step toward our long-term goal of studying TRE efficacy for cognition is to determine whether TRE is feasible in a population with cognitive impairment. In this proposal we will test whether TRE can be successfully implemented in postmenopausal women with mild cognitive impairment.