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Metabolic syndrome associated with increased risk of developing cognitive impairment, results indicate

Monday, March 23 2009 | Comments

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What's This? Older women with the metabolic syndrome are more likely to develop cognitive impairment relative to their counterparts without the metabolic syndrome, according to findings from a prospective study conducted in 25 countries.

The authors of the study noted that the evidence linking the metabolic syndrome with cognitive impairment is growing, but there are some conflicting results. To further evaluate this association, they assessed the 4-year risk of cognitive impairment in 4,895 older women (mean age, 66.2 yrs) who had no cognitive impairment at baseline.

Of the 497 women with the metabolic syndrome, 7.2% developed cognitive impairment, defined as a Short Blessed test score of >6 or clinically adjudicated dementia or mild cognitive impairment, compared with 4.1% of those without the metabolic syndrome (age-adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.66; 95% CI, 1.14-2.41).

Among all of the women included in the study, 10.6% were obese, 18.3% had high triglyceride levels, 24.5% had high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, 39.7% had high blood pressure, and 7.8% had elevated fasting blood glucose levels. The risk of cognitive impairment increased as the number of metabolic syndrome components increased. Specifically, each additional metabolic syndrome component was associated with a 23.0% increase in the age-adjusted odds of cognitive impairment (OR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.09-1.39), although the authors noted that this effect was somewhat attenuated after further multivariate adjustment. (Yaffe K, et al. Arch Neurol 2009;66:324-328.)

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