Greater risk of developing dementia in Veterans with PTSD

5 Nov 2010

Greater risk of developing dementia in Veterans with PTSD

The July 2010 Issue of CTU-Online highlighted a study report-ing that Veterans with PTSD were 1.8 times more likely than those without PTSD to be diagnosed with dementia. Now, a team from the Houston VAMC provides independent corrobo-ration of an association between PTSD and dementia. Using Purple Heart status as a proxy for combat-related injury, the investigators followed 10,481 Veterans age 65 and older for 11 years. After excluding 1,044 Veterans who developed demen-tia or died during the first 2 years, the investigators found that the incidence of dementia was highest among Veterans with PTSD: 9.5% for those without a Purple Heart and 6.8% for those with a Purple Heart. These groups did not differ in multi-variate analyses that controlled for demographic characteristics and comorbid health conditions. However, compared with Vet-erans who did not have PTSD, only the PTSD/no Purple Heart group had a greater incidence of dementia, e.g., their odds were 2.2 times greater than the odds among Veterans without PTSD or a Purple Heart. This finding is puzzling if one

assumes that the combination of PTSD and a Purple Heart would cause the greatest risk for dementia; a possible explana-tion is higher mortality before the study, resulting in a healthier subset of these Veterans being enrolled. Findings from this and the previous study stress the importance of determining how PTSD confers an independent risk for dementia and how to reduce this risk through treatment. Read the article…http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2010.02977.x.

Qureshi, S. U., Kimbrell, T. A., Pyne, J. M., Magruder, K. M., Hudson, T. J., Petersen, N. J., Yu, H., Schulz, P. E., & Kunik, M. E. (2010). Greater prevalence and incidence of dementia in older veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of the American Geriatrics Soci-

National Center for PTSD