ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2022
Association between age at onset of multimorbidity and incidence of dementia: 30 year follow-up in Whitehall II prospective cohort study.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Relationship Between Clusters of Multimorbidity and Dementia Risk: A Systematic Review.International journal of geriatric psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Multimorbidity and risk of dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies.The journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease · 2025Pooled it
- Multimorbidity and fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease: a systematic review.European geriatric medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Sociodemographic intersections and risk of multiple long-term conditions: A systematic review.PloS one · 2025Pooled it
- Age-friendly environments and incident motoric cognitive risk syndrome in older adults: A prospective cohort study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Standardized chronic disease management reduces comorbidity risk in China.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Multimorbidity burden and patterns associated with DeepBrainNet-derived brain-age gap in dementia-free older adults: A community-based study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Early dynamics of multimorbidity in 17.4 million people in Spain: onset patterns and prognostic value.European journal of public health · 2026Article
- Accelerating real-world prediction and research in Alzheimer's: The M3AD study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Multidomain Predictors of Four-Year Risk for Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment Among Community-Dwelling Korean Older Adults.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Dementia Risk Reduction Education Programs and Resources for Indigenous Peoples of Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, United States of America and Australia: A Scoping Review.Dementia (London, England) · 2026Article
- Comorbidity sequence, sex, and APOE-genotype forecast Alzheimer's disease diagnosis.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Workload-capacity imbalances and their impact on self-management complexity in patients with multimorbidity: a multicenter cross-sectional study.Annals of medicine · 2025Article
- Hidden risk: Latent cognitive profiles and structural brain age reveal vulnerability in midlife metabolic syndrome.Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society : JINS · 2025Article
- Healthy Body and Mind Program to Improve Health Outcomes and Reduce Dementia Risk in People With Osteoarthritis: Protocol for a Feasibility and Acceptability Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- The relationship between frailty and multimorbidity in Chinese older adults: the chain mediating effects of sleep quality and anxiety.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- The RESILIENT Dataset: Multimodal Monitoring of Ageing-Related Comorbidities and Cognitive Decline.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Delirium is associated with incident dementia across the multimorbidity spectrum: a population-based cohort study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Burden of multimorbidity and verbal phonemic fluency in cognitively healthy and mildly impaired older adults: findings from a real-world study.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2025Article
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo examine the association of midlife and late life multimorbidity, including severity of multimorbidity, with incident dementia.
designProspective cohort study.
settingCivil service departments in London (Whitehall II study, study inception in 1985-88).
participants10 095 participants, aged 35 to 55 at baseline.
main outcome measureIncident dementia at follow-up between 1985 and 2019. Cause specific Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine the association of multimorbidity overall and at age 55, 60, 65, and 70 with subsequent dementia, taking into account the competing risk of death.
resultsThe prevalence of multimorbidity (≥2 chronic diseases) was 6.6% (655/9937) at age 55 and 31.7% (2464/7783) at age 70; 639 cases of incident dementia occurred over a median follow-up of 31.7 years. After adjustment for sociodemographic factors and health behaviours, multimorbidity at age 55 was associated with subsequent risk of dementia (difference in incidence rate per 1000 person years 1.56, 95% confidence interval 0.62 to 2.77; hazard ratio 2.44, 95% confidence interval 1.82 to 3.26). The association weakened progressively with older age at onset of multimorbidity. At age 65, onset of multimorbidity before age 55 was associated with 3.86 (1.80 to 6.52) per 1000 person years higher incidence of dementia (hazard ratio 2.46, 1.80 to 2.26) and onset between 60 and 65 was associated with 1.85 (0.64 to 3.39) per 1000 person years higher incidence (1.51, 1.16 to 1.97). Severity of multimorbidity (≥3 chronic diseases) at age 55 was associated with a 5.22 (1.14 to 11.95) per 1000 person years higher incidence of dementia (hazard ratio 4.96, 2.54 to 9.67); the same analyses at age 70 showed 4.49 (2.33 to 7.19) per 1000 person years higher incidence (1.65, 1.25 to 2.18).
conclusionMultimorbidity, particularly when onset is in midlife rather than late life, has a robust association with subsequent dementia. The increasingly younger age at onset of multimorbidity makes prevention of multimorbidity in people with a first chronic disease important.
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