Spouses of people with dementia had a higher risk of developing dementia themselves, a study of nearly 1 million people showed.The relationship between spousal dementia and subsequent risk was broadly similar in women and men.Younger people had higher relative risks, but older age groups experienced greater absolute risk differences.
Spouses of people with dementia had a higher risk of developing dementia themselves, a matched cohort study of nearly 1 million married people in Taiwan showed.
Compared with unexposed spouses, both husbands and wives of dementia patients had a higher risk of all-cause dementia, corresponding to roughly three additional cases per 100 spouses over 5 years, said Chi-Shin Wu, MD, PhD, of the National Health Research Institutes in Zhunan Town, and co-authors.
For women, the hazard ratio was 1.74 (95% CI 1.70-1.78), with a 5-year adjusted risk difference of 2.75 percentage points, the researchers reported in JAMA Network Open. For men, the hazard ratio was 1.69 (95% CI 1.64-1.73), with a 5-year adjusted risk difference of 3.49 percentage points.
Similar trends emerged for both Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. Younger people had higher relative risks, but older age groups experienced greater absolute risk differences. For all-cause dementia, higher income and having more children buffered the association.
