Risk Factors for Mild Cognitive Impairment in the Cardiovascular Health Study Cognition Study

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Abstract
OLDER PARTICIPANTS with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have an increased risk of developing dementia, especially Alzheimer disease.1 Therefore, the proper identification of these individuals is important because they constitute a clinical entity that is suitable for therapeutic interventions. However, one of the problems in identifying risk factors for MCI is that there are several neurological, systemic, and psychiatric syndromes that can cause cognitive impairment. Elderly subjects who have cerebrovascular disease,2 white matter lesions (WMLs),3 diabetes mellitus,4 and hypertension and heart disease,5 or depression6 can present with mild cognitive deficits. Furthermore, studies that focused only on risk factors for MCI have found that hypertension diagnosed in midlife7 and a history of coronary artery bypass grafting8 increased the risk of developing MCI. In this study, we examined the risk factors for MCI in the context of a longitudinal population study, the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) Cognition Study. These factors were first examined for the whole CHS cohort, and further analysis was conducted in the Pitts burgh, Pa, sample, where we examined the association between risk factors and MCI subgroups.