Highlights
- •The risks for developing dementia were 1.88-fold in patients with thalassemia.
- •The HRs of dementia increased from 1.69 for who had not transfusion to 2.72 for who had transfusion.
- •Our long-term cohort study shows thalassemia is a risk factor for dementia.
Abstract
Background
This study is a nationwide population-based retrospective cohort study to investigate
the risk for developing dementia in thalassemia population.
Methods
In a longitudinal cohort of 1 million insured people, we identified 871 thalassemia
patients who were newly diagnosed between 2000 and 2004 and selected a comparison
cohort of 3484 subjects without thalassemia. We analyzed the risks for thalassemia
and dementia using Cox proportional hazard regression models to assess the dementia
risk in thalassemia patients after adjusting for age, gender, insured amount, urbanization
and comorbidities.
Results
The overall risks for developing dementia were 1.88-fold (95% CI = 1.10–3.21) in patients with thalassemia compared with the comparison cohort after
adjusting for age, sex, insured amount, urbanization and comorbidities. The combined
effects measured for patients afflicted with thalassemia and the comorbidities of
diabetes, hypertension, CAD, head injury, depression, CKD, or substance-related disorder
exhibited a significant association with hyperlipidemia risk compared with that measured
for patients without thalassemia and without any counterpart comorbidities. In subgroup
analysis, the HRs of dementia increased, from 1.69 (95% CI = 0.93–3.07) for those who had not undergone transfusion to 2.72 (95% CI = 1.09–6.78) for those experienced transfusion compared with the no thalassemia cohort
(p for trend < 0.01).
Conclusion
Our long-term cohort study result showed that thalassemia should be considered a crucial
risk factor for developing dementia.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 05, 2015
Accepted:
May 21,
2015
Received:
May 14,
2015
Footnotes
☆Author contributions: Conception and design: Yu-Guang Chen and Chia-Hung Kao. Administrative support: Chia-Hung Kao. Collection and assembly of data: All authors. Data analysis and interpretation: Yu-Guang Chen, Hsuan-Ju Chen and Chia-Hung Kao. Manuscript writing: All authors. Final approval of manuscript: All authors.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
