Association of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease with Cognitive Decline in Very Elderly Men

Abstract

Aim: To determine the change in cognitive function in very elderly men with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) over a 3-year period relative to age- and education-matched controls. Methods: In this hospital-based, prospective case-control study, we evaluated a consecutive series of 110 very elderly men with COPD and 110 control subjects who were hospitalized between January and December 2007. All the subjects performed cognitive tests at baseline and underwent annual evaluations (for 3 years), which included the Mini-Mental State Examination, word list recall, delayed recall, animal category fluency, and the symbol digit modalities test. Results: In mixed-effects models adjusted for hypertension and coronary heart disease, COPD was associated with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline based on the Mini-Mental State Examination, word list recall, delayed recall, animal category fluency, and the symbol digit modalities test (all p < 0.01) compared to controls. Conclusion: COPD is associated with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline in very elderly persons.

Associations Between Sleep‐Disordered Breathing, Nocturnal Hypoxemia, and Subsequent Cognitive Decline in Older Community‐Dwelling Men: The Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Sleep Study

“…In a small study of young volunteers, acute intermittent hypoxemia was related to decreases in working memory . Individuals with COPD, who have low levels of oxygen saturation, have been shown to have greater cognitive decline than those without COPD, and resting hypoxemia was a strong predictor of incident cognitive impairment in individuals with COPD . The findings of this study, along with results from animal models and COPD studies, suggest that nocturnal hypoxemia is a mechanism for cognitive decline.…”

IQ Scores of Children with Moderate Asthma: A Comparison with Healthy Children

“…Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic lung disease and a major risk factor for cognitive impairment due to chronic hypoxemia. 7,8 It is our opinion that asthma is a chronic lung disorder that may affect cognitive performance, although severity and the duration of illness are important factors to be considered.…”

Trajectories of change in cognitive function in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

“…As measured by the MMSE, cognitive function significantly declined in people with COPD (mean age of 68 years) over 2 years (Incalzi et al., ). A recent longitudinal study has shown that people with COPD with a mean age ˃80 years had a more rapid rate of cognitive decline over 3 years, based on MMSE scores, word list recall, delayed recall, animal category fluency and symbol digit modalities (Zhou et al., ). Cognitive decline in people with COPD was also reported over 6 years, using a data set from the Health and Retirement Study (Hung, Wisnivesky, Siu, & Ross, ).…”

“…Complementing cross‐sectional studies, a recent longitudinal study has reported that COPD was significantly associated with more rapid cognitive decline over 3 years in patients than in control subjects (Zhou et al., ). Not only does COPD increase the risk of cognitive impairment over time, but individuals who have had COPD more than 5 years had a greater risk of developing cognitive impairment (Rusanen et al., ; Singh et al., ).…”

“…However, how cognitive function changes in people with COPD over time is not well known, despite the fact that it declines rapidly in this population and significantly impacts functional decline in healthy older adults. Furthermore, most studies have used only mean scores of cognitive tests to describe changes in cognitive function, which may limit individual variations (Incalzi et al., ; Zhou et al., ). Although several cross‐sectional studies have identified factors associated with cognitive function in people with COPD (Dodd et al., ; Park & Larson, ), few studies have examined factors associated with cognitive change over time.…”