Dementia Prevalence Higher in Persons With Ankylosing Spondylitis

A study published in PLoS One found persons with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) have a significantly higher prevalence of general dementia and Alzheimer's dementia, in comparison with the overall population, reports Rheumatology Advisor . The researchers aimed to gauge the association between dementia and AS via an extensive dataset from the Korean National Health Insurance System (K-NHIS). A total of 14,193 participants were chosen as the AS group, and 70,965 individuals were placed in the age- and gender-matched control cohort. Prevalence of overall dementia and Alzheimer's dementia in the AS group was substantially higher than in the control group, while the adjusted hazard ratio for overall dementia and Alzheimer's dementia in the AS group also exhibited statistical significance. Meanwhile, the prevalence of vascular dementia did not differ significantly between the AS and control cohorts. A key constraint was that risk factor analysis for AS and dementia was incomplete since certain detailed clinical factors in the K-NHIS dataset were not assessed, in addition to the unavailability of data on the status of AS-related inflammation.