The risk of dementia in adults with abdominal aortic aneurysm

Abstract

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and dementia have similar epidemiological profiles and common pathogenic mechanisms. However, there have been few studies on the link between these two diseases. For this study, information from 2009 to 2015 was extracted from the Korean National Health Insurance system database. A total of 15,251 participants with a new diagnosis of AAA was included. Propensity score matching by age and sex with patients in whom AAA was not diagnosed was used to select the control group of 45,753 participants. The primary endpoint of this study was newly diagnosed dementia (Alzheimer’s disease (AD), vascular dementia (VD), or other type of dementia). The incidence of dementia was 23.084 per 1000 person years in the AAA group, which was higher than that of the control group (15.438 per 1000 person years). When divided into AD and VD groups, the incidence of AD was higher than that of VD, but the HR of AAA for occurrence of dementia was higher in VD (1.382 vs. 1.784). Among the various risk factors, there was an interaction of age, hypertension, and history of cardiovascular disease with incidence of dementia (p < 0.05). In the presence of hypertension, the HR for occurrence of dementia was high according to presence or absence of AAA (1.474 vs 1.165). In addition, this study showed higher HR in the younger age group (age < 65) and in the group with no history of cardiovascular disease [1.659 vs. 1.403 (age), 1.521 vs. 1.255 (history of cardiovascular disease)]. AAA was associated with increased risk of dementia regardless of AD or VD, even after adjusting for several comorbidities. These findings indicate that follow-up with AAA patients is necessary for early detection of signs and symptoms of dementia.

Chronic kidney disease as a risk factor for abdominal aortic aneurysm: a nationwide population-based study

“…CVD is one of the major causes of death in patient with CKD, and CKD is a well-known risk factor for CVD, such as coronary heart disease, heart failure, and cerebral vascular disease [ 11 12 ]. The prevalence of AAA depends on associated risk factors that include advanced age, male sex, Caucasian, positive family history, smoking, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, peripheral vascular occlusive disease, and coronary artery disease, and almost of these risk factors are the classical risk factors for atherosclerosis, which demonstrate that AAA is one of the subtypes of CVDs [ 6 12 13 14 ].…”

“…Proteinuria was defined as more than 1+ result in dipstick urine test. Baseline covariates and comorbidities were evaluated during the screening period and defined using ICD-10 codes ( Supplementary Table 1 ), and the robustness of these definitions has been validated in our previous study [ 10 11 ].…”