• Maria C Norton, Jeffrey Dew, Heeyoung Smith, Elizabeth Fauth, Kathleen W Piercy, Breitner John C S JC, JoAnn Tschanz, Heidi Wengreen, Kathleen Welsh-Bohmer, and Cach... more e County Investigators. less
• Department of Family Consumer and Human Development, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322, USA. maria.norton@usu.edu
• J Am Geriatr Soc. 2012 Mar 1; 60 (3): 405-12.

ObjectivesTo identify distinct behavioral patterns of diet, exercise, social interaction, church attendance, alcohol consumption, and smoking and to examine their association with subsequent dementia risk.DesignLongitudinal, population-based dementia study.SettingRural county in northern Utah, at-home evaluations.ParticipantsTwo thousand four hundred ninety-one participants without dementia (51% male, average age 73.0 ± 5,7; average education 13.7 ± 4.1 years) initially reported no problems in activities of daily living and no stroke or head injury within the past 5 years.MeasurementsSix dichotomized lifestyle behaviors were examined (diet: high ≥ median on the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension scale; exercise: ≥5 h/wk of light activity and at least occasional moderate to vigorous activity; church attendance: attending church services at least weekly; social Interaction: spending time with family and friends at least twice weekly; alcohol: currently drinking alcoholic beverages ≥ 2 times/wk; nonsmoker: no current use or fewer than 100 cigarettes ever). Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify patterns among these behaviors. Proportional hazards regression modeled time to dementia onset as a function of behavioral class, age, sex, education, and apolipoprotein E status. Follow-up averaged 6.3 ± 5.3 years, during which 278 cases of incident dementia (200 Alzheimer's disease (AD)) were diagnosed.ResultsLCA identified four distinct lifestyle classes. Unhealthy-religious (UH-R; 11.5%), unhealthy-nonreligious (UH-NR; 10.5%), healthy-moderately religious (H-MR; 38.5%), and healthy-very religious (H-VR; 39.5%). UH-NR (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.54, P = .028), H-MR (HR = 0.56, P = .003), and H-VR (HR = 0.58, P = .005) had significantly lower dementia risk than UH-R. Results were comparable for AD, except that UH-NR was less definitive.ConclusionFunctionally independent older adults appear to cluster into subpopulations with distinct patterns of lifestyle behaviors with different levels of risk for subsequent dementia and AD.© 2012, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation © 2012, The American Geriatrics Society.

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