WP22/08: Do infections raise risk of dementia?

Working Paper 22/08

Leah Richmond-Rakerd
Avshalom Caspi
Stephanie D’Souza
Monica Iyer
Barry Milne
Terrie Moffitt

Infections have been hypothesised to be involved in the etiology of dementia. However, most prior research has involved either patients already diagnosed with dementia, or cohort studies with only short-term follow-up. Including participants from younger ages – before the period of dementia onset – and following them for longer periods of time will improve our understanding of the temporal relation between infections and dementia. This research will assess the association between multiple types of infections and subsequent dementia across a 30-year period to answer the research questions:

1. Are infections are associated with subsequent dementia in the New Zealand population?
2. Are associations present across different types of infections, and across both Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias?

This research will contribute to scientific understanding of the links between infections and dementia, which may lead to the development of better treatments and prevention efforts.

We will use the following tables from the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI):

• Address notification
• interRAI
• Mortality data
• Pharmaceutical data
• Publicly funded hospital discharges
• Privately funded hospital discharges
• 2013 Census
• 2018 Census
• Life event data

Do infections lead to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in the population? University of Michigan Center to Accelerate Population Research in Alzheimer’s (CAPRA) grant to Assistant Professor Leah Richmond-Rakerd.