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Fructose Consumption is Associated with a Higher Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Prospective Cohort Study

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Abstract

Background

This study aimed to investigate the association between fructose consumption and all-cause dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia.

Methods

We used data from the Framingham Offspring Study (FOS) Cohort exams 5 through 9. Fructose consumption was quantified using a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) at cohort examinations 5 and participants were dementia-free at baseline. Surveillance for incident events commenced at examination 9 through 2014. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate the hazard ratios for the association between fructose consumption and incidence of all-cause dementia and AD dementia.

Results

Over a mean follow-up of 15.2 (interquartile range, 12.3–17.1) years (31715.1 person-years), there were 233 dementia events of which 163 were AD dementia (70.0%). After multivariate adjustments, individuals with the highest consumption of fructose had a higher risk of all-cause dementia, and AD dementia when comparing daily cumulative consumption to 0 per week (reference), with HRs of 1.49 (95% 1.14–1.84, P for trend < 0.001) for all-cause dementia, and 1.60 (95%CI 1.22–2.01, P-trend < 0.001) for AD dementia. And the comparable results were shown in the subgroups for individuals with median consumption of fructose.

Conclusion

Fructose consumption was associated with a higher risk of all-cause dementia and AD dementia.

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Data Availability: Data described in the manuscript, code book, and analytic code will not be made available because the authors are prohibited from distributing or transferring the data and codebooks on which their research was based to any other individual or entity under the terms of an approved NHLBI Framingham Heart Study Research Proposal and Data and Materials Distribution Agreement through which the authors obtained these data.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Framingham Heart Study (FHS) and the Chongqing General Hospital.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nephrology, Chongqing General Hospital, No.118 Xingguang Avenue, Liangjiang New Area, Chongqing, 401147, China

    J. Yan, K. Zheng, X. Zhang & Yingsong Jiang

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Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical Standards: The study procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board and the Principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Yan, J., Zheng, K., Zhang, X. et al. Fructose Consumption is Associated with a Higher Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Prospective Cohort Study. J Prev Alzheimers Dis 10, 186–192 (2023). https://doi.org/10.14283/jpad.2023.7

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