Neuropsychiatric symptoms in cognitively normal older persons, and the association with Alzheimer’s and non-Alzheimer’s dementia

Table 4 Associations between the neuropsychiatric symptoms (affective, agitation, and psychotic symptoms) and incident dementia

Dementia subtype	Presence of affective symptoms^a		Presence of agitation symptoms^a		Presence of psychotic symptoms^a
Dementia subtype	HR (95% CI)^b	p value	HR (95% CI)^b	p value	HR (95% CI)^b	p value
All-cause dementia	1.5 (1.2–1.8)	< 0.001	1.6 (1.3–2.1)	< 0.001	3.6 (2.0–6.4)	< 0.001
Alzheimer’s dementia	1.4 (1.1–1.7)	0.018	1.7 (1.3–2.2)	< 0.001	2.2 (1.1–4.6)	0.027
Vascular dementia	1.9 (1.0–3.5)	0.042	1.2 (0.6–2.5)	0.649	5.7 (1.3–25.6)	0.023
Dementia with Lewy Bodies	2.8 (1.5–5.3)	0.002	0.7 (0.3–1.7)	0.399	13.9 (3.8–50.7)	< 0.001
Frontotemporal lobar degeneration	2.7 (0.8–9.4)	0.114	4.4 (1.3–15.0)	0.019	8.7 (2.0–38.7)	0.004
Other or unknown subtypes of dementia	1.3 (0.7–2.6)	0.433	2.2 (1.1–4.3)	0.024	4.5 (1.4–14.4)	0.011

HR hazard ratio, CI confidence interval
^aAffective symptoms included depression, anxiety, and apathy. Agitation symptoms included disinhibition, agitation, and irritability. Psychotic symptoms included delusions and hallucinations
^bModel adjusted for baseline variables of age, sex, ethnicity, years of education, APOE e4 status, and use of antidepressants. Significant risk estimates (with p ≤ 0.05) are highlighted in bold

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