Scientific Reports (May 2021)

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 Chi,
  • Kyunga Kim,
  • Sang Won Seo,
  • Hee Jin Kim,
  • Tae-Young Chung,
  • Dong Hui Lim

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91026-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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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.