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. 2014 Jan 29;9(1):e87095.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087095. eCollection 2014.

Diabetes mellitus and the risk of Alzheimer's disease: a nationwide population-based study

Chin-Chou Huang  1 , Chia-Min Chung  2 , Hsin-Bang Leu  3 , Liang-Yu Lin  4 , Chun-Chih Chiu  5 , Chien-Yi Hsu  5 , Chia-Hung Chiang  6 , Po-Hsun Huang  7 , Tzeng-Ji Chen  8 , Shing-Jong Lin  9 , Jaw-Wen Chen  1 , Wan-Leong Chan  10
Affiliations

Diabetes mellitus and the risk of Alzheimer's disease: a nationwide population-based study

Chin-Chou Huang et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Objectives: Possible association between diabetes mellitus (DM) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been controversial. This study used a nationwide population-based dataset to investigate the relationship between DM and subsequent AD incidence.

Methods: Data were collected from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database, which released a cohort dataset of 1,000,000 randomly sampled people and confirmed it to be representative of the Taiwanese population. We identified 71,433 patients newly diagnosed with diabetes (age 58.74 ± 14.02 years) since January 1997. Using propensity score, we matched them with 71,311 non-diabetic subjects by time of enrollment, age, gender, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and previous stroke history. All the patients were followed up to December 31, 2007. The endpoint of the study was occurrence of AD.

Results: Over a maximum 11 years of follow-up, diabetic patients experienced a higher incidence of AD than non-diabetic subjects (0.48% vs. 0.37%, p<0.001). After Cox proportional hazard regression model analysis, DM (hazard ratio [HR], 1.76; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.50-2.07, p<0.001), age (HR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.10-1.12, p<0.001), female gender (HR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.06-1.46, p=0.008), hypertension (HR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.07-1.59, p=0.01), previous stroke history (HR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.28-2.50, p<0.001), and urbanization status (metropolis, HR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.07-1.63, p=0.009) were independently associated with the increased risk of AD. Neither monotherapy nor combination therapy with oral antidiabetic medications were associated with the risk of AD after adjusting for underlying risk factors and the duration of DM since diagnosis. However, combination therapy with insulin was found to be associated with greater risk of AD (HR, 2.17; 95% CI, 1.04-4.52, p=0.039).

Conclusion: Newly diagnosed DM was associated with increased risk of AD. Use of hypoglycemic agents did not ameliorate the risk.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Kaplan-Meier estimates of survival free of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) events in subjects categorized by diabetes mellitus (DM).
The event-free survival rates were significantly different in two groups (p<0.001 by log rank test).
Figure 2
Figure 2. The trend of the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) according to the duration of diabetes mellitus (DM).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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