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. 2017 Dec 6;9(1):94.
doi: 10.1186/s13195-017-0322-2.

Anemia is associated with incidence of dementia: a national health screening study in Korea involving 37,900 persons

Su-Min Jeong  1 , Dong Wook Shin  2 , Ji Eun Lee  1 , Jung Hyeon Hyeon  1 , Jinkook Lee  3   4 , SangYun Kim  5
Affiliations

Anemia is associated with incidence of dementia: a national health screening study in Korea involving 37,900 persons

Su-Min Jeong et al. Alzheimers Res Ther. .

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate whether anemia is associated with dementia incidence in the elderly.

Methods: Using the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Health Screening Cohort (NHIS-HEALS) database, we identified 66-year-old subjects (n = 37,900) who were free of dementia and stroke. Anemia (hemoglobin < 12 g/dl for women and < 13 g/dl for men) and the severity of anemia (mild, moderate, or severe) were defined using World Health Organization criteria. The incidence of dementia was identified using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, dementia diagnosis codes (F00, F01, F02, F03, and G30) with prescription of an antidementia drug. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to assess HRs for dementia incidence according to anemia.

Results: After adjusting for sex, baseline cognitive state, body mass index, smoking status, household income, disability, depression, hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia, we found a significant association between anemia and dementia incidence (adjusted HR 1.24; 95% CI 1.02-1.51). The adjusted HRs for incidence of dementia according to the severity of anemia were 1.19 (95% CI 0.98-1.45) for those with mild anemia, 1.47 (95% CI 0.97-2.21) for those with moderate anemia, and 5.72 (95% CI 1.84-17.81) for those with severe anemia, showing a significant p value for trend (p = 0.003).

Conclusions: Anemia is an independent risk factor for dementia incidence, with a marked increase of risk associated with severe anemia.

Keywords: Anemia; Dementia; ICD-10; Severity of anemia.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was approved by Seoul National University Hospital’s Institutional Review Board (IRB number 1611-061-807), and the need for consent from individual subjects was waived because we used publicly available anonymized data.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flowchart of the study population. NHSP National Health Screening Program
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Kaplan-Meier survival analysis for incidence of dementia according to the severity of anemia. The severity of anemia was categorized as (a) none (hemoglobin ≥ 13 g/dl in men and hemoglobin ≥ 12 g/dl in women), (b) mild (hemoglobin ≥ 11 g/dl), (c) moderate (hemoglobin 8–10.9 g/dl), or (d) severe (hemoglobin < 8 g/dl) according to World Health Organization criteria. The incidence of dementia increased according to the severity of anemia, with a significant p value for trend (< 0.001)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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