NAFLD does not increase the risk of incident dementia: A prospective study and meta-analysis

Hangkai Huang; Zhening Liu; Jiarong Xie; Chengfu Xu

doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.03.041

NAFLD does not increase the risk of incident dementia: A prospective study and meta-analysis

J Psychiatr Res. 2023 May:161:435-440. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.03.041. Epub 2023 Apr 6.

Authors

Hangkai Huang¹, Zhening Liu¹, Jiarong Xie², Chengfu Xu³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, 310003, China.
² Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, 310003, China; Department of Gastroenterology, Ningbo First Hospital, Ningbo, 315010, China; Zhejiang Provincial Clinical Research Center for Digestive Diseases, Hangzhou, 310003, China.
³ Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, 310003, China; Zhejiang Provincial Clinical Research Center for Digestive Diseases, Hangzhou, 310003, China. Electronic address: xiaofu@zju.edu.cn.

PMID: 37043979
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.03.041

Abstract

The association between nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and incident dementia remains unclear. This study aimed to explore whether NAFLD was associated with the risk of incident dementia. We conducted a prospective analysis of 179,222 UK Biobank participants. NAFLD was diagnosed based on the fatty liver index. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of NAFLD for incident dementia. The results from this and six previous prospective studies were combined in meta-analyses. During a median follow-up of 12.4 years (2,149,839 person-years), 4950 incident dementia cases, including 2318 Alzheimer's disease (AD) cases and 1135 vascular dementia (VD) cases, were identified. There was no significant association between NAFLD and the risks of all-cause dementia (HR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.90-1.06; P = 0.528). NAFLD was also not significantly associated with AD or VD (HR: 0.95, 95% CI: 0.84-1.07, P = 0.401; HR: 1.03, 95% CI: 0.88-1.22, P = 0.689, respectively). Our meta-analyses of prospective studies included 879,749 subjects. The pooled HR of NAFLD for all-cause dementia was 1.01 (95% CI: 0.94-1.08), and that for VD was 0.99 (95% CI: 0.86-1.13). All included cohort studies were of high quality as assessed by the Newcastle‒Ottawa scale. We found no evidence of an association between NAFLD and incident dementia.

Keywords: Dementia; Epidemiology; Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

Publication types

Meta-Analysis
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Alzheimer Disease* / complications
Humans
Incidence
Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease* / complications
Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease* / epidemiology
Prospective Studies
Risk Factors