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Coffee consumption and incident dementia

  • NEURO-EPIDEMIOLOGY
  • Published:
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Abstract

Coffee consumption has been frequently reported for its protective association with incident dementia. However, this association has mostly been reported in studies with short follow-up periods, and it remains unclear to what extent reverse causality influences this association. Studying the long-term effect of coffee consumption on dementia with stratified follow-up time may help resolve this issue. In the population-based Rotterdam Study, coffee consumption was assessed in 1989–1991 (N = 5,408), and reassessed in 1997–1999 (N = 4,368). Follow-up for dementia was complete until 2011. We investigated the association of coffee consumption and incident dementia for the two examination rounds separately using flexible parametric survival models. We studied the entire follow-up period as well as stratified follow-up time at 4 years. For both examination rounds, we did not find an association between coffee consumption and dementia over the entire follow-up. In contrast, for both examination rounds, a protective association was observed only in the follow-up stratum of 0–4 years. Our data suggest that coffee consumption is not associated with incident dementia during long-term. The protective association observed in the short-term might be driven by reverse causality.

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Acknowledgments

The Rotterdam Study is sponsored by the Erasmus Medical Center and Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMW), The research Institute for Diseases in the Elderly (RIDE), The Netherlands Genomics Initiative, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, the European Commission (DG XII), and the Municipality of Rotterdam. Further support was obtained from the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC). None of the funding organizations or sponsors were involved in the study design; in collection, analysis, or interpretation of data; in writing the report; and in making decision to submit the article for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare the conflicts of interest as none.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Saira Saeed Mirza, Henning Tiemeier, Renée F. A. G. de Bruijn, Albert Hofman, Oscar H. Franco & M. Arfan Ikram

  2. Department of Neurology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Renée F. A. G. de Bruijn, Peter J. Koudstaal & M. Arfan Ikram

  3. Department of Radiology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    M. Arfan Ikram

  4. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Henning Tiemeier

  5. Department of Psychiatry, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Henning Tiemeier

  6. Department of Pediatrics, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Jessica Kiefte-de Jong

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  1. Saira Saeed Mirza
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  2. Henning Tiemeier
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  4. Albert Hofman
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  8. M. Arfan Ikram
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Correspondence to M. Arfan Ikram.

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Mirza, S.S., Tiemeier, H., de Bruijn, R.F.A.G. et al. Coffee consumption and incident dementia. Eur J Epidemiol 29, 735–741 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-014-9943-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-014-9943-y

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