Healthy lifestyle and the risk of Alzheimer's dementia: Findings from two longitudinal studies

Objective
To quantify the impact of a healthy lifestyle on the risk of Alzheimer's dementia.

Methods
Using data from the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP n=1,845) and the Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP n=920), we defined a healthy lifestyle score on the basis of non-smoking, >=150 min/week moderate/vigorous intensity physical activity, light-to-moderate alcohol consumption, high-quality MIND diet (upper 40%), and engagement in late-life cognitive activities (upper 40%), giving an overall score ranging from 0 to 5. Cox proportional hazard models were used for each cohort to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI) of the lifestyle score with Alzheimer’s dementia and a random effect meta-analysis was used to pool the results.

Results
During a median follow-up of 5.8 years in CHAP and 6.0 years in MAP, 379 and 229 participants, respectively had incident Alzheimer's dementia. In multivariable-adjusted models, the pooled HR (95%CI) of Alzheimer..., , Data File Contents
Table 1: Contribution of healthy lifestyle factors to the score (Update 5/5/23: Corrected the labeling for the MAP study).
Table 2: Hazard ratios of Alzheimer’s dementia according to the adherence to healthy lifestyle factors in adjusted model for cardiovascular risk factors.
Table 3: Hazard ratios of Alzheimer’s dementia according to the adherence to healthy lifestyle factors in adjusted model for depressive symptoms (CESD score).
Table 4: Hazard ratios of Alzheimer’s dementia according to the adherence to healthy lifestyle factors in excluding events during 2.5 years of follow-up.
Table 5: Hazard ratios of Alzheimer’s dementia according to the adherence to healthy lifestyle factors in excluding events after 10 years of follow-up.
Table 6: Hazard ratios of Alzheimer’s dementia according to the adherence to healthy lifestyle factors in the score without light-to-moderate alcohol intake.
Table 7: Hazard ratios of Alzheimer’s dementia according to the adherence to healt...