Visual Impairment and Risk of Dementia: The UK Biobank Study

• Published in: American journal of ophthalmology Vol. 235; pp. 7 - 14
• Main Authors: Zhu, Zhuoting, Shi, Danli, Liao, Huan, Ha, Jason, Shang, Xianwen, Huang, Yu, Zhang, Xueli, Jiang, Yu, Li, Longyue, Yu, Honghua, Hu, Wenyi, Wang, Wei, Yang, Xiaohong, He, Mingguang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.03.2022; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Adult; Age; Aged; Biobanks; Biological Specimen Banks; Blood pressure; Dementia; Dementia - complications; Dementia - epidemiology; Diabetes; Ethics; Health services; Humans; Hypertension; Middle Aged; Patient admissions; Prospective Studies; Risk Factors; Sensitivity analysis; United Kingdom - epidemiology; Vision Disorders - complications; Vision Disorders - epidemiology; Visual impairment; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; SD; VI; OR; UK; CI; HR; VA; logMAR
• ISSN: 0002-9394; 1879-1891
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ajo.2021.08.010

To investigate the relationship between visual impairment (VI) and dementia in the UK Biobank Study. Prospective cohort study. A total of 117,187 volunteers (aged 40-69 years) deemed free of dementia at baseline were included. Habitual distance visual acuity worse than 0.3 logMAR units in the better-seeing eye was used to define VI. The incident dementia was based on electronically linked hospital inpatient and death records. During a median follow-up of 5.96 years, the presence of VI was significantly associated with incident dementia (hazard ratio: 1.78; 95% confidence interval: 1.18-2.68; P = .006). There was a clear trend between the severity of VI and risk of dementia (P for trend = .002). We found VI was associated with increased risk of dementia, with a progressively greater risk among those with worse visual acuity. Our findings suggested that VI might be a modifiable risk factor for dementia and highlighted the potential value of VI elimination to delay the manifestation of dementia.