Identified Diseases Often Preceding Alzheimer’s Disease 0 12

Depression, sleep disorders, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes can occur long before the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. This conclusion was reached by researchers who analyzed data from electronic medical records of millions of patients. The work was published in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy (AR&T).

The authors studied anonymized data from two independent databases in the U.S., covering a total of 153 million people. In the main sample, they compared more than 43,000 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and over 419,000 individuals without this diagnosis. The scientists analyzed medical histories for 10 years prior to the identification of dementia and identified conditions that were more frequently observed in individuals before the development of the disease.

In total, the researchers found hundreds of medical phenotypes that were statistically more common among future Alzheimer’s patients. The most pronounced differences concerned mental and neurological disorders — in particular, depression and sleep disorders. Cardiovascular diseases, including cerebral atherosclerosis, and metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes were also more frequently recorded.

Additional analysis of biobank data showed that some of the identified conditions are associated with genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, the authors emphasize that the discovered connections do not prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. In their opinion, early detection and management of such conditions could become an important direction for the prevention and reduction of dementia risk.