As populations age, maintaining cognitive health is increasingly important for independence,
quality of life, and participation in community life. Cognitive decline in later life places
growing pressure on families, health services, and social care systems. Cognitive ageing is
heterogeneous, with individuals becoming more dissimilar over time as rates of decline diverge
(Singh-Manoux and Kivimäki, 2010). This makes it important to understand why some older adults may benefit more than others from modifiable strategies intended to support healthy cognitive ageing.
Diet is one promising non-pharmacological approach, but evidence from dietary interventions remains mixed. Greater adherence to healthy dietary patterns, particularly Mediterranean-style diets, is often associated with better cognitive outcomes, yet intervention findings are inconsistent and may depend on individual variability. This project investigates whether one source of that variability is urolithin metabotype. Ellagitannins, found in foods such as pomegranates and walnuts, are converted by gut microbes into metabolites called urolithins, and individuals differ in their ability to produce them.Metabotyping has been proposed as a way of identifying subgroups who respond differently to dietary interventions, but this has rarely been tested in relation to cognitive ageing.
Using a two-stage design, the project will assess cognitive performance, mood, wellbeing, habitual
diet, and urolithin metabotype in community-dwelling older adults, before using a stratified
dietary intervention to test whether cognitive response differs by metabotype. In this project,
metabotyping is used as a tool to understand variation in cognitive ageing and to inform more
targeted and equitableapproaches to supporting cognitive health in later life.