Littlejohns, TJ;
Hayat, S;
Luben, R;
Brayne, C;
Conroy, M;
Foster, PJ;
Khawaja, AP;
(2021)
Visual impairment and risk of dementia in two population-based prospective cohorts: UK Biobank and EPIC-Norfolk.
The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences
, Article glab325. 10.1093/gerona/glab325.
(In press).
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Abstract
Visual impairment has emerged as a potential modifiable risk factor for dementia. However, there are a lack of large studies with objective measures of vison and with more than ten years of follow-up. We investigated whether visual impairment is associated with an increased risk of incident dementia in UK Biobank and EPIC-Norfolk. In both cohorts, visual acuity was measured using a "logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution" (LogMAR) chart and categorised as no (≤0.30 LogMAR), mild (>0.3 - ≤0.50 LogMAR), and moderate to severe (>0.50 LogMAR) impairment. Dementia was ascertained through linkage to electronic medical records. After restricting to those aged ≥60 years, without prevalent dementia and with eye measures available, the analytic samples consisted of 62,206 UK Biobank and 7,337 EPIC-Norfolk participants, respectively. In UK Biobank and EPIC-Norfolk. respectively, 1,113 and 517 participants developed dementia over 11 and 15 years of follow-up. Using multivariable cox proportional-hazards models, the hazard ratios for mild and moderate to severe visual impairment were 1.26 (95% Confidence Interval [CI] 0.92-1.72) and 2.16 (95% CI 1.37-3.40), in UK Biobank, and 1.05 (95% CI 0.72-1.53) and 1.93 (95% CI 1.05-3.56) in EPIC-Norfolk, compared to no visual impairment. When excluding participants censored within 5 years of follow-up or with prevalent poor or fair self-reported health, the direction of the associations remained similar for moderate impairment but were not statistically significant. Our findings suggest visual impairment might be a promising target for dementia prevention, however the possibility of reverse causation cannot be excluded.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Visual impairment and risk of dementia in two population-based prospective cohorts: UK Biobank and EPIC-Norfolk |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/gerona/glab325 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glab325 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | epidemiology, longitudinal, prevention, visual acuity |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Institute of Ophthalmology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10138630 |
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