People with digestive problems should take extra care to prevent dementia, a new study warns. That’s because certain gastrointestinal problems are associated with dementia, and some have a higher risk of developing dementia than others.
Clinicians know about diseases of the digestive system. Affect It alters the gut microbiota and affects gut metabolites associated with dementia risk. However, little is known about the relationship between these diseases and dementia, and whether certain gastrointestinal diseases have a more pronounced association with the onset of dementia. The researchers study About the relationship between the two on Tuesday American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Gastrointestinal disorders include gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), diverticulitis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and colitis.
The team evaluated data from 458,181 participants without dementia. This data was obtained from UK Biobank between 2006 and 2021. Researchers evaluated the association between 14 different gastrointestinal diseases and assessed the incidence of dementia for each gastrointestinal disease. The analysis differentiated associations between patients with early-onset dementia (<65 years) and those with late-onset dementia (>65 years). The researchers followed each person’s data for a median of 12.4 years. During this period, 6,415 people were diagnosed with dementia.
Even after researchers adjusted the data, 11 of the 14 gastrointestinal diseases studied showed a significant association with an increased risk of developing dementia.
The risk of dementia was increased by 26% in people with intestinal diverticular disease (diverticulitis) and by 121% in people with liver cirrhosis. People with gastrointestinal diseases have diverticulitis, cirrhosis, IBS, gastritis, duodenitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, ulcerative colitis, gallbladder disease, and peptic ulcers with early-onset dementia; The authors reported that they were more likely to develop dementia.