Skip to main content

  • RVO Raises the Risk of Dementia

    By Lynda Seminara
    Selected By: Richard K. Parrish II, MD
    Add to My Bookmarks

    Journal Highlights

    American Journal of Ophthalmology, January 2021

    Download PDF

    Retinal vascular defects are associated with brain-related changes in patients with dementia, but evidence of a link between retinal vein occlusion (RVO) and dementia risk is limited. To explore this possibility, Nam et al. looked at data from South Korea and found a significant association between RVO and elevated risk of all-cause dementia, Alzheimer disease (AD), and vascular dementia (VD).

    Data were gathered from the South Korean National Health Insurance Service, which covers approximately 97% of the South Korean population. Individuals who were diagnosed with RVO from 2006 to 2010 and who had a health exam in 2009 or 2010 were eligible for inclusion. Patients were monitored for the development of dementia through December 2016; the mean follow-up time was 6.6 years. Individuals under 40 years of age and those with missing data were excluded from the study.

    Overall, 46,259 people qualified for enrollment in the RVO group. A comparison group of 138,777 individ­uals without RVO, matched for age, sex, and systolic blood pressure, also received monitoring through 2016. Diagnoses of all dementia categories were established from standard ICD-10 and antidementia prescription codes. Demographic and lifestyle factors were determined from patient responses to questionnaires. Three multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression models were applied: unadjusted; adjusted for age and sex; and adjusted for age, sex, and health/lifestyle variables.

    The mean age in both study groups at baseline was 63.4 ± 10.1 years. There were no significant between-group differences in gender distribution or systolic blood pressure. Kaplan-Meier curves demonstrated greater likelihood of dementia development in the RVO group (log-rank p < .001). After adjust­ment for all confounding variables, the risk of all-cause dementia was greater in the RVO group relative to the com­parison group (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.16; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.12-1.21), as were the risk of AD (HR: 1.15; 95% CI: 1.12-1.20) and VD (HR: 1.24; 95% CI: 1.12-1.37).

    In this study, RVO was significantly associated with all categories of demen­tia (even in the absence of hyperten­sion) and thus may be a risk factor for dementia. To the authors’ knowledge, their study is the first large-scale longi­tudinal investigation of the relationship between RVO and dementia.

    The original article can be found here.