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Reference: Weyerer, 2011
Cohort: German Study on Ageing, Cognition and Dementia in Primary Care Patients
Risk Factor: Alcohol


Average Follow-up Time Detail
"...a mean follow-up period of 3 years." No standard deviation is provided.
"Among the 3,327 patients interviewed at baseline, 84.8% (n = 2,820) could be personally interviewed 1.5 years later and 73.9% (n = 2,460) 3 years later."

Exposure Detail
Investigators collected data on participants’ consumption of many types of alcoholic beverages. This entry pertains to total alcohol.

Abstinent (reported never drinking during the week) vs.
Drinkers (1 or more days a week)

The investigators also reported on categories of grams of alcohol consumed per day, which is presented on another row of this table:
abstinent
1–9 g
10–19 g
20–29 g
30–39 g
40 or more grams

"To assess the current use of alcohol, participants were asked the following question: ‘At present, on how many days per week do you drink alcohol?’ (answer: never/1–2 days/3–4 days/5–6 days/7 days/I do not know). Those subjects who consumed alcohol were then asked ‘When you drink, how much alcohol do you drink on average?’ Frequency of alcohol consumption and quantity of beer, wine and liquor were determined. Data on alcohol intake were converted to a uniform measure of grams per day. Regardless of container size or alcohol type (i.e. beer, wine or spirits), one standard drink is any drink containing 10 g of alcohol. In this study, we distinguished between quantity of alcohol consumption (abstinent/1–9 g/10–19 g/20–29 g/30–39 g/40 or more grams) and type of alcohol (abstinent/wine (only)/beer (only)/mixed: wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages)."

Note: it is not clear how the final grams of alcohol categories were derived from the responses to items on the questionnaire.

Exposure distributions were only provided for certain categories of consumption:

"Information on current alcohol consumption was available for 3,180 subjects (Table 1): 50.0% were abstinent, 24.8% consumed less than 1 drink (10 g of alcohol) per day, 12.8% 10–19 g and 12.4% 20 or more grams. A small subgroup of 25 participants fulfilled the criteria of harmful drinking (>60 g of alcohol per day for men, respectively, >40 g for women). One man (>120 g of alcohol per day) and one woman (>80 g of alcohol per day) reported an extremely high consumption of alcohol."

Ethnicity Detail
Investigators do not provide data on ethnicity. The cohort is from Germany.

Age Detail
All participants were age 75 years or older.
1,698 (53%) were age 75-79
1,482 (47%) were age 80+

Screening and Diagnosis Detail
Screening Method:
DSM IIIR - dementiaDiagnostic and Statistical Manual III - Revised - dementia
Other

AD Diagnosis:
DSM IIIR Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III-Revised
DSM IV Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV
Other

"Diagnostic assessment of dementia was based on the Structured Interview for Diagnosis of Dementia of Alzheimer type, Multi-infarct Dementia and Dementia of other Aetiology according to DSM-III-R, DSM-IVand ICD-10 [6].

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was diagnosed according
to new consensus criteria proposed by the International
Working Group on MCI [7–9]."

Covariates & Analysis Detail
Analysis Type:
Cox proportional hazards regression

AD Covariates:
Aage
Eeducation
Ggender
APOE4APOE e4 genotype
CIcomorbidity index
DEPdepression
IADLIinstrumental activities of daily living impairment
ALONliving alone
MCImild cognitive impairment
SMsmoking status

TD Covariates:
Aage
Eeducation
Ggender
APOE4APOE e4 genotype
CIcomorbidity index
DEPdepression
IADLIinstrumental activities of daily living impairment
ALONliving alone
MCImild cognitive impairment
SMsmoking status