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Longitudinal association between visual disability and cognitive function among middle-aged and older adults in China
  1. Ye He1,2,3,
  2. Weitao Song1,2,3,
  3. Xin Jiang4,
  4. Chao Wang1,2,3,
  5. Yi Zhou1,2,3,
  6. Bing Lu5,6,7,
  7. Minwen Zhou5,6,7
  1. 1 Eye Center of Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China
  2. 2 Hunan Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China
  3. 3 National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China
  4. 4 Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China
  5. 5 Department of Ophthalmology, Shanghai General Hospital (Shanghai First People’s Hospital), Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, Hunan, China
  6. 6 National Clinical Research Center for Eye Diseases, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
  7. 7 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Fundus Diseases, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
  1. Correspondence to Dr Minwen Zhou, Shanghai General Hospital Department of Ophthalmology, Shanghai, China; zmw8008{at}163.com

Abstract

Background/aims To determine the associations between visual disability and cognitive decline in Chinese middle-aged and older adults.

Methods A total of 6748 subjects were enrolled into this longitudinal, population-based, nationally representative study from two waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Lagged dependent variable regression was used to model the independent associations between self-reported visual disability and cognitive function including memory and mental status.

Results The mean age of the 6748 individuals was 56.33 years, and 3350 (49.6%) were women. The prevalence of visual disability was 3.8%, which increased with age (p<0.001). Both memory and mental status score worsened over time (all p<0.001). After controlling for covariates, lagged dependent variable regression models showed that visual disability at baseline was significantly associated with memory decline after 7 years (β=−0.252, p=0.046). After stratifying by age groups, this association was only significant in the 55–64 age group (β=−0.372, p=0.033). In addition, both memory and mental status in 2011 predicted memory decline over 7 years (p=0.024 and p=0.045, respectively).

Conclusions Our results suggest that visual disability may be a risk factor of memory decline, but not mental status among middle-aged and elderly adults in China. Future studies are needed to further corroborate the association between visual disability and cognitive decline and to determine whether interventions to preserve good visual function can prevent cognitive decline.

  • public health
  • epidemiology
  • vision

Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open access repository. Not applicable.

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Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open access repository. Not applicable.

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Footnotes

  • YH and WS contributed equally.

  • Contributors Study concept and design: MZ. Guarantor: MZ. Writing-original draft: YH. Writing-review and editing: WS and MZ. Collection, management, analysis and interpretation of data: YH, XJ, CW, YZ and BL. YH and WS should be considered as equal first authors.

  • Funding This research was supported by the Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (19ZR1440900), Shanghai Pujiang Program (2019PJD047), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82000896, 81974132, 81770927 and 81500714) and Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province, China (2020JJ5896).

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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