Early-Life Risk Factors for Dementia and Cognitive Impairment in Later Life: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Early-life environment is related to childhood brain development and cognitive function in later life. However, the associations of early-life risk factors with dementia and cognitive impairment were still controversial. Our study aims to investigate early-life risk factors for dementia and cognitiv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Alzheimer's disease Vol. 67; no. 1; p. 221
Main Authors Wang, Xue-Jie, Xu, Wei, Li, Jie-Qiong, Cao, Xi-Peng, Tan, Lan, Yu, Jin-Tai
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Netherlands 01.01.2019
Subjects
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Cognition Disorders - epidemiology
Dementia - epidemiology
Humans
Middle Aged
Risk Factors
meta-analysis
dementia
risk factors
early-life
systematic review
Cognitive impairment
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Summary:Early-life environment is related to childhood brain development and cognitive function in later life. However, the associations of early-life risk factors with dementia and cognitive impairment were still controversial. Our study aims to investigate early-life risk factors for dementia and cognitive impairment. PubMed and Cochrane Library were searched to identify prospective cohort and retrospective case-control studies exploring early-life factors for dementia and cognitive impairment. Pooled effect estimates for each factor were calculated by random-effect model. Thirty-seven studies with 46,727 participants were included. The pooled results indicated significant associations of dementia with food deficiency (OR = 2.05, 95% CI = 1. 22-3.44), low education level (RR = 1.80, 95% CI = 1.60-2.02), and shorter leg length (OR = 1.19, 95% CI = 1.07-1.32). Other potential risk factors identified in the systematic review include rural residence, number of siblings, history of head trauma, early parental death or re-marriage, and poor learning ability. Early-life factors, including education level, leg length, history of childhood head trauma, family-related factors and learning ability, were associated with the risk of dementia and cognitive impairment in later life. Further high-quality longitudinal studies are needed to verify the causality between early-life risk factors and dementia and cognitive impairment.
ISSN:1875-8908
DOI:10.3233/JAD-180856