Abstract
The Finnish population offers many advantages for evaluating the impact of anti-dementia medication on mortality in Alzheimer's disease (AD) due to broad range of individual-level data collected in national health and social care registries and the fact that Finland has one of the highest mortality rates for dementia globally. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the association of anti-dementia medication with 2-year risk of death and all-cause mortality in patients with AD. Methods: This was a retrospective, non-interventional registry study based on individual-level data using Finnish national health and social care registries. An incident cohort of 9,204 AD patients (first AD diagnosis in 2012) was formed from a population of 316,470 individuals ≥74 years of age. The main outcome measure was overall 2-year risk of death. Statistical modelling was used to assess mortality (Kaplan-Meier) and adjusted hazard ratios (HR) (Cox proportional hazard model). Results: Early start of anti-dementia medication (treatment started ≤3 months from AD diagnosis) reduced significantly the risk of all-cause death compared to AD patients who had late medication initiation (defined as treatment started >3 months from AD diagnosis/no medication; HR, 0.51; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.46-0.57). Dementia was the most common recorded cause of death in both groups. Conclusion: This study places importance on early diagnosis of AD and subsequent early initiation of drug treatment in decreasing 2-year risk of death.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1297-1308 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Journal of Alzheimer's Disease |
Volume | 71 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2019 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- Alzheimer's disease
- cause of death
- cholinesterase inhibitors
- dementia
- Finland
- memantine
- registry study
- risk of death