Abstract
Background
Fibromyalgia is a syndrome of chronic pain and other symptoms and is associated with
patient discomfort and other diseases. This nationwide matched-cohort population-based
study aimed to investigate the association between fibromyalgia and the risk of developing
dementia, and to clarify the association between fibromyalgia and dementia.
Materials and Methods
A total of 41,612 patients of age ≥50 years with newly diagnosed fibromyalgia between
January 1, and December 31, 2000 were selected from the National Health Insurance
Research Database of Taiwan, along with 124,836 controls matched for sex and age.
After adjusting for any confounding factors, Fine and Gray competing risk analysis
was used to compare the risk of developing dementia during the 10 years of follow-up.
Results
Of the study subjects, 1,704 from 41,612 fibromyalgia patients (21.23 per 1,000 person-years)
developed dementia when compared to 4,419 from 124,836 controls (18.94 per 1,000 person-years).
Fine and Gray competing risk analysis revealed that the study subjects were more likely
to develop dementia (hazard ratio: 2.29, 95% CI: 2.16-2.42; P < 0.001). After adjusting for sex, age, monthly income, urbanization level, geographic
region of residence and comorbidities the hazard ratio was 2.77 (95% CI: 2.61-2.95,
P < 0.001). Fibromyalgia was associated with increased risk of all types of dementia
in this study.
Conclusions
The study subjects with fibromyalgia had a 2.77-fold risk of dementia in comparison
to the control group. Therefore, further studies are needed to elucidate the underlying
mechanisms of the association between fibromyalgia and the risk of dementia.
Key Indexing Terms
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 06, 2017
Footnotes
☆The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
☆☆Funding:The study was funded by the Tri-Service General Hospital Research Foundation (Grant numbers: TSGH-C105-003, TSGH-C105-130 and TSGH-C106-002).
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 Southern Society for Clinical Investigation. Published by All rights reserved.
