Importance: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly; however, no effective treatment is currently available. The identification of predictors for AD could facilitate early detection of the disease. Since the eye is an easily accessible part of the central nervous system, features presented through the eyes may provide important insights on the development of AD.
Objective: To investigate whether diseases of the eye, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy(DR), are effective predictors for the development of AD.
Design, Setting, and Participants: In this cohort study, we used randomized sampled data of one million patients who had made insurance claims from the National Health Insurance. We included all newly diagnosed patients with AD, AMD, DR, or glaucoma between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2010.
Interventions: We excluded patients who had sought treatment for AD(ICD-9 code 331.0)before 2000. To examine the relationship between ocular diseases, ICD coding targets were defined as follows: AMD (ICD-9 codes 362.50, 362.52), DR (ICD-9 codes 362.01, 362.02, 250.50, 250.51, 250.53), and glaucoma (ICD-9 code 365). We only included these comorbidities if they had been diagnosed prior to the diagnosis of AD.
Main Outcomes and Measures: We examined the relationship between eye disease and the occurrence of AD in each of the groups. A Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was performed, with adjustments made for age and sex.
Results: There were a total of 4,097 patients in the eye disease group and 20,475 in the control group. A total 50 patients from the eye disease group developed AD during the study period, representing a cumulative incidence rate of 1.22%. The corresponding figure for the control group was 0.04%. The adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) with its confidence interval (CI) for AD varied between the ocular diseases; it was the highest in DR (39.91, 95% CI 4.79-332.67), followed by AMD (36.94, 95% CI 4.62-295.46), and glaucoma (34.08, 95% CI 13.37-86.84).
Conclusions and Relevance: AMD, DR, and glaucoma were associated with an increased risk of AD. This study demonstrates that the presence of ocular diseases could be a sensitive indicator of preclinical AD with potential value in population screening.
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