Original ArticlesNSAIDs and incident Alzheimer’s disease. the Rotterdam study
Section snippets
Study population
The Rotterdam Study is a prospective population-based cohort study of neurological, cardiovascular, locomotor and ophthalmologic diseases in the elderly. All inhabitants of Ommoord, a suburb of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, aged 55 years or more and living in the district for at least 1 year were invited in 1990–1993 to participate in the study. Of the 10,275 eligible subjects, 7,983 (78%) participated and were interviewed at home; 7,129 (89%) of them made two follow-up visits to the research
Results
As a result of matching, the mean age in both groups was almost equal: 85.3 years in cases and 84.7 years in controls (Table 1). There were significantly more female than male sets. Controls had a longer mean exposure than cases. The number of incomplete prescriptions was high, but similar in cases and controls. A significantly higher proportion of cases compared to controls were residents of a nursing home (35.1% vs. 19.3%, p = 0.01) and cases were significantly more often current smokers than
Discussion
In this population-based nested case-control study, overall there was no significant association of NSAID use with the risk for incident AD. However, there was a nonsignificant tendency towards a risk reduction for subjects with at least 6 months of exposure. Furthermore, there was some evidence that a protective effect may be detectable in subjects younger than 85 years.
Several issues of validity need to be discussed when interpreting these results: potential selection bias, information bias
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to staff of the Rotterdam Study Centre for help in the data collection. Furthermore, we thank K. Jacobs and A. Maengkom for collecting the data on NSAID use. We also acknowledge the collaboration with the general practitioners in Ommoord and the RIAGG (Rotterdam Regional Institute for Ambulatory Mental health Care) Noord Rotterdam. This study was made possible by financial support from the NESTOR stimulation program for geriatric research in the Netherlands (Ministry of Health
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