Abstract 11955: Heart Disease as a Risk Factor for Dementia Has Higher Association in Women Than in Men

Abstract

Introduction: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) have been linked to cognitive impairment and dementia. However, whether the association of CVD events and dementia differed by sex remains unclear. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that there might be a sex difference in the association between CVD events and dementia, and the effect of CVD on the risk of dementia might be greater in women than in men. Methods: We used cohort data from UK Biobank, a large population-based prospective cohort study that recruited 502 649 individuals ages 40- 69, between 2006 and 2010. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate sex-specific hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI), and women-to-men ratio of HRs (RHR) for the association between CVD (including coronary heart diseases (CHD), stroke and heart failure) and incident dementia (including all-cause dementia, Alzheimer's Disease (AD), vascular dementia and dementias in other diseases classified elsewhere). Results: Overall, 482 185 (54.6% women) people with no prevalent dementia were included. After 10 (median) years follow-up, 5330 participants (46.9% women) developed dementia. The crude incidence rates were 10.1 for women and 13.8 for men, per 10,000 person-years. The HRs (95%CI) between any CVD events, un-overlapped CHD, stroke, heart failure and all-cause dementia in women were higher than the estimates in men, with an RHR (95%CI) of 1.25 (1.17, 1.34), 1.37 (1.23, 1.51), 1.15 (1.00, 1.34) and 1.16 (1.03, 1.31) respectively. Also, the HRs for AD of CHD and heart failure in women were higher than the estimates in men, with an RHR (95%CI) of 1.73 (1.48, 2.02) and 1.40 (1.14, 1.72) respectively. Nevertheless, the HRs (95% CI) between stroke and vascular dementia was higher in men (5.35, 4.07-7.04) than that in women (3.24, 2.14-4.92) (Table 1). Conclusions: There was a sex difference in the association between CVD events and dementia. The risk of CHD and heart failure for dementia was greater in women than in men.