Poster Presentations

Session Title: Alzheimer's Disease (AD) including Non-Cognitive Aspects
Presentation Date: Friday, March 14 – Saturday, March 15, 2009

A PROSPECTIVE STUDY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ALZHEIMER´S DISEASE WITH REGARD TO TSH AND HOMOCYSTEINE

S. Annerbo¹, M. Kivipelto², J. Lökk^1
1Karolinska University Hospital, Huddinge, Stockholm, Sweden, ²Aging Research Center Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Background: The combination of elevated total homocysteine (tHcy) levels and low levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) are linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD) in some studies, although the evidence is mixed
Objective: To prospectively investigate the association between tHcy and TSH and the subsequent development of dementia and AD.
Methods: A sub-sample of 228 non-demented subjects was taken from the Kungsholmen Project (KP), a population-based longitudinal study among persons 75+ years. Information of tHcy and TSH levels were taken from the base-line investigation of the KP-study. AD diagnosis was set according to DSM-III-R criteria.
Results: Increasing tHcy levels were related to an increased risk of AD (n =61) after a mean follow-up time of 6.7 years. Persons with high tHcy (the 3^rd tertile) had more than twice as high risk of developing AD than persons with low tHcy, even after adjusting for age, sex, education, ApoE status, MMSE score and laboratory parameters. tHcy was negatively correlated with TSH (p=0,02). There was no influence of TSH on the development of AD.
Conclusions: These results suggest that homocysteine is involved in the development of AD. The connection of elevated tHcy and low TSH levels needs to be studied further