Visual impairment increases the risk of dementia, especially in young males in a 12-year longitudinal follow-up study of a national cohort
Ga‐In Lee, Sang Ah, Kyunga Kim, Sang Won Seo, Hee‐Jin Kim, Tae‐Young Chung, Dong Hui Lim
Abstract
We investigated the effect of visual impairment (VI) on dementia development in a national cohort. In this 12-year nationwide population-based retrospective cohort study, national data were collected from National Health Insurance Cooperation of South Korea from 2002 to 2017, comprising 799,074 subjects selected from the dementia-free cohort representative of the Korean population. Crude hazard ratios (HRs) as well as age- and sex-adjusted HRs and confidence intervals (CIs) for the development of dementia were estimated using multivariable Cox regression models. VI significantly increased the risk of dementia with a HR of 2.726 (95% CI 2.251-3.300, p < 0.0001) after adjusting for age, sex, and interaction between age, sex, and VI. HR of interaction between VI and age for dementia was 0.539 (95% CI 0.436-0.667, p < 0.0001). In the sensitivity analysis after adjustment for age, sex, household income level, BMI and other comorbidities, VI showed higher risk for all the type of dementia (p < 0.0001). In subgroup analysis of VI, young males showed the highest risk for development of dementia with a HR of 2.687 (95% CI 2.219-3.254, p < 0.0001). VI significantly increased the risk of dementia in the study cohort, and young males with VI appeared to be the most susceptible to the development of dementia.