ArticleGenome medicine2018
Red blood cell indices and anaemia as causative factors for cognitive function deficits and for Alzheimer's disease.
Article in Genome medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 85 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies ancestry-specific loci for Alzheimer's disease.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Pooled it
- Metabolic signatures, vitamin D, and red cell distribution width in dementia risk: UK Biobank insights.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Dementia risk across distinct metabolic profiles in the UK Biobank.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Association of the glucose-to-lymphocyte ratio with all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality in U.S. adults: A population-based cohort study.Clinics (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2026Article
- A combined neuronal extracellular vesicle-haematology panel for clinical stratification of Alzheimer's disease and dementia.Metabolic brain disease · 2026Article
- Mild cognitive impairment cases affect the predictive power of Alzheimer's disease diagnostic models using routine clinical variables.npj aging · 2026Article
- Age-dependent neuroinflammatory effects of red blood cells and their exosomes in a human brain-on-chip model.Blood red cells & iron · 2026Article
- Circadian syndrome (CircS) and cognitive trajectory deterioration in middle-aged and older adults: A national cohort study with causal forest analysis.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Frequency-Specific Transcranial Photobiomodulation Elicits Complementary Glial Mechanisms for Neurovascular Protection and Amyloid Clearance in Alzheimer Disease.Cyborg and bionic systems (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Associations between platelet indices and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease pathology in cognitively intact adults: the CABLE study.Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2025Article
- Hepcidin modifies the relationship between anemia, erythrocyte indices, and neurocognitive performance in virally suppressed people with HIV.AIDS (London, England) · 2025Article
- Article
- Relationship between anemia, hemoglobin level and risk of osteosarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults: the Bushehr Elderly Health (BEH) program.Archives of osteoporosis · 2025Article
- Red blood cell distribution width to albumin ratio (RAR) is associated with low cognitive performance in American older adults: NHANES 2011-2014.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Prevalence, sub-types, and associated factors of anemia among inpatients at a tertiary psychiatric hospital in Tanzania: a cross-sectional study.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Peripheral blood cell profile and monocyte-high-density lipoprotein ratio in Alzheimer's disease: a hospital-based case-control study.Archives of medical science : AMS · 2025Article
- Associations between the red blood cell distribution width and 30-day mortality in critically ill patients with delirium: a retrospective study using the MIMIC-IV database.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Hemoglobin-to-red blood cell distribution width ratio: a new insight into cognitive protection for obese individuals.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Hemoglobin-to-red blood cell distribution width ratio in the relationship between occupational aluminum exposure and cognitive function impairment: a mediation analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Cardiovascular disease and depression as mediators between red blood cell distribution width to albumin ratio and cognitive impairment in older adults.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundStudies have shown that low haemoglobin and anaemia are associated with poor cognition, and anaemia is known to be associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), but the mechanism of this risk is unknown. Here, we first seek to confirm the association between cognition and anaemia and secondly, in order to further understand the mechanism of this association, to estimate the direction of causation using Mendelian randomisation.
methodsTwo independent cohorts were used in this analysis: AddNeuroMed, a longitudinal study of 738 subjects including AD and age-matched controls with blood cell measures, cognitive assessments and gene expression data from blood; and UK Biobank, a study of 502,649 healthy participants, aged 40-69 years with cognitive test measures and blood cell indices at baseline. General linear models were calculated using cognitive function as the outcome with correction for age, sex and education. In UK Biobank, SNPs with known blood cell measure associations were analysed with Mendelian randomisation to estimate direction of causality. In AddNeuroMed, gene expression data was used in pathway enrichment analysis to identify associations reflecting biological function.
resultsBoth sample sets evidence a reproducible association between cognitive performance and mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH), a measure of average mass of haemoglobin per red blood cell. Furthermore, in the AddNeuroMed cohort, where longitudinal samples were available, we showed a greater decline in red blood cell indices for AD patients when compared to controls (p values between 0.05 and 10
conclusionsLower haemoglobin levels in blood are associated to poor cognitive function and AD. We have used UK Biobank SNP data to determine the relationship between cognitive testing and haemoglobin measures and suggest that haemoglobin level and therefore anaemia does have a primary causal impact on cognitive performance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.