Identifying Likely Incidents of Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury and Elevated Risk of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementia: Health Care Cost Institute Data.

OBJECTIVES

To examine the association between incident traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) and the risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD).

METHODS

This is a longitudinal case-control study. We used 2012-2019 commercial insurance claims data from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) and applied semi-parametric Cox survival models to compute hazard ratio (HR) for ADRD diagnosis comparing cases with incident TSCI with their controls without TSCI, adjusting for age, sex, a set of comorbid conditions, and any use of 6 classes of prescription medications. To reduce potential selection bias, we conducted a probability matching between cases (n = 251) and controls (n = 2480) using a 1:10 ratio without replacement based on age, sex, diagnosed chronic conditions, and index year of the TSCI diagnosis.

RESULTS

Cases with incident TSCI had a higher HR of 2.39 (95% CI 1.19-4.80) for ADRD compared to their matched controls. Our sensitivity analysis of removing cases with traumatic brain injury at the index TSCI date or afterward did not change the results (HR 2.21, 95% CI 1.06-4.62).

CONCLUSION

Incident TSCI is associated with an increased risk of ADRD. Clinical guidelines for people with TSCI should consider the early and regular use of cognitive screening.