Socio-demographic and health-related factors associated with cognitive impairment in the elderly in Taiwan

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Herng-Chia Chiu¹  Chun-Min Chen²  Ming-Shiang Wu²  Tzuo-Yun Lan³  Tsuo-Hung Lan⁴ 

[1] Graduate Institute of Healthcare Administration, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, 100, Shih-Chuan lst Road, 807, Kaohsiung, Taiwan;Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, 35 Keyan Road, 350, Zhunan Town, Miaoli County, Taiwan;Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, 35 Keyan Road, 350, Zhunan Town, Miaoli County, Taiwan;School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, No.155, Sec.2, Linong Street, 112, Taipei, Taiwan;School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, No.155, Sec.2, Linong Street, 112, Taipei, Taiwan;

关键词: Cognitive Impairment;    Cognitive Function;    Cognitive Decline;    National Health Interview Survey;    Coffee Consumption;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-22

 received in 2010-08-28, accepted in 2011-01-11,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCognitive impairment is an age-related condition as the rate of cognitive decline rapidly increases with aging. It is especially important to better understand factors involving in cognitive decline for the countries where the older population is growing rapidly. The aim of this study was to examine the association between socio-demographic and health-related factors and cognitive impairment in the elderly in Taiwan.MethodsWe analysed data from 2119 persons aged 65 years and over who participated in the 2005 National Health Interview Survey. Cognitive impairment was defined as having the score of the Mini Mental State Examination lower than 24. The χ2 test and multiple logistic regression models were used to evaluate the association between cognitive impairment and variables of socio-demography, chronic diseases, geriatric conditions, lifestyle, and dietary factors.ResultsThe prevalence of cognitive impairment was 22.2%. Results of multivariate analysis indicated that low education, being single, low social support, lower lipid level, history of stroke, physical inactivity, non-coffee drinking and poor physical function were associated with a higher risk of cognitive impairment.ConclusionMost of the characteristics in relation to cognitive impairment identified in our analysis are potentially modifiable. These results suggest that improving lifestyle behaviours such as regular exercise and increased social participation could help prevent or decrease the risk of cognitive impairment. Further investigations using longitudinal data are needed to clarify our findings.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Wu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.