Association of Pulmonary Tuberculosis With Risk of Alzheimer's: A Population-Based Cohort Study

Background: Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is a serious global public health problem which involves complex host inflammatory responses. It is now believed that inflammation also plays a critical role in Alzheimer9s disease (AD). However, study exploring the relationship between TB and AD is scant. In this study, we attempted to evaluate whether risk of AD is increased in patients with TB. Methods: We conducted a retrospective population-based cohort study by using data retrieved from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. We identified 6,260 patients aged 50 y or older who were newly diagnosed with TB between 1998 and 2011 as the TB group, and 50,012 enrollees without TB as the non-TB group. Both groups were followed up until the end of 2013. A Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to estimate the risk of AD in patients with TB, compared with those without TB. Comorbidities considered were atrial fibrillation, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, heart failure, stroke, depression, and head injury. Results: The overall risk of AD in the TB group was 1.43 (95% confidence interval = 1.01—2.02) higher than that in the non-TB group. Conclusions: This study suggests that after adjustment for comorbidities, TB patients were found to be associated with an increased risk of AD. Future studies are warranted to validate this observational study and elucidate the underlying pathophysiology between TB and AD. Disclosure: None.