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Statins and risks of dementia among patients with heart failure: a population-based retrospective cohort study in Hong Kong

Qing-Wen Ren, Tiew-Hwa Katherine Teng, Yi-Kei Tse, Christopher Tze Wei Tsang, Si-Yun Yu, Mei-Zhen Wu, Xin-Li Li, D. Hung et al.

The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific, 2024

104,295 participants · 27 citations

Abstract

Summary Background Heart failure (HF) and dementia frequently co-exist with shared pathological mechanisms and risk factors. Our study aims to investigate the association between statin therapy and the risks of dementia and its subtypes among patients with HF. Methods The Hong Kong Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System database was interrogated to identify patients with incident HF diagnosis from 2004 to 2018, using ICD 9/ICD 10 codes. Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) was used to balance baseline covariates between statin users (N = 54,004) and non-users (N = 50,291). The primary outcomes were incident all-cause dementia, including subtypes of Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, and unspecified dementia. Cox proportional-hazard model with competing risk regression was performed to estimate the sub-distribution hazards ratio (SHR) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) of the risks of all-cause dementia and its subtypes that are associated with statin use. Findings Of all eligible patients with HF (N = 104,295), the mean age was 74.2 ± 13.6 years old and 52,511 (50.3%) were male. Over a median follow-up of 9.9 years (interquartile range [IQR]: 6.4–13.0), 10,031 (9.6%) patients were diagnosed with dementia, among which Alzheimer's disease (N = 2250), vascular dementia (N = 1831), and unspecified dementia (N = 5950) were quantified separately. After IPTW, statin use was associated with a 20% lower risk of incident dementia compared with…

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Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design. Reported size: 104,295 participants or records.

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