Patients with rosacea have a higher risk of being diagnosed with certain forms of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease (AD), according to Dr. Alexander Egeberg and his associates.
“We hypothesized that patients with rosacea may have increased risk of AD, because we have clinically observed a familial overrepresentation of AD in patients with rosacea, and because of the overlap of proinflammatory mediators between rosacea and AD,” wrote Dr. Egeberg of the National Allergy Research Center at the University of Copenhagen.
The researchers studied more than 5 million Danish citizens 18 years and older from Jan. 1, 1997, to Dec. 31, 2012. After excluding some people from the analysis for various reasons, including incomplete information, the cohort size was 5,591,718. Overall, 82,439 individuals had rosacea, and 29,193 of patients were diagnosed with AD.
“We found a significant association with dementia, and especially AD, in patients with rosacea,” the investigators wrote. They said the associations were strongest in people aged 60 or under at baseline, and “the results remained consistent in a range of sensitivity analyses and after adjustment for potential confounding factors.”
Future research might focus on symptoms of cognitive dysfunction in patients with rosacea, they wrote.
Find the study here.