MERTK and Mental deterioration: In additional analyses assessing whether age or sex interacted with microglial markers, we observed that sex showed significant interactions with CST7 (t = 3.4, P < 0.001) and MERTK (t = 4.0, P < 0.001) in A+ individuals in addition to interactions with TREM2 (t = 3.9, P < 0.001), CSF1 (t = 3.3, P = 0.001), CST7 (t = 3.6, P < 0.001) and MERTK (t = 3.9, P < 0.001) in A+T+ individuals, indicating that women with higher baseline microglial markers showed less steep cognitive decline compared with men.