Association of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with cognitive decline in very elderly men.
OBJECTIVE
To determine the change in cognitive function in very elderly men with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) over a 3-year period relative to age-and education-matched controls.


METHODS
In this hospital-based, prospective case-control study, we evaluated a consecutive series of 110 very elderly men with COPD and 110 control subjects who were hospitalized between January and December 2007. All the subjects performed cognitive tests at baseline and underwent annual evaluations (for 3 years), which included the Mini-Mental State Examination, word list recall, delayed recall, animal category fluency, and the symbol digit modalities test.


RESULTS
In mixed-effects models adjusted for hypertension and coronary heart disease, COPD was associated with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline based on the Mini-Mental State Examination, word list recall, delayed recall, animal category fluency, and the symbol digit modalities test (all p < 0.01) compared to controls.


CONCLUSIONS
COPD is associated with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline in very elderly persons.
Department of Geriatric Neurology, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University School of Medicine, Nanjing, China.
Guoqing
G
Zhou
Jinxia
J
Liu
Fang
F
Sun
Xiaofeng
X
Xin
Lihui
L
Duan
Xiaowei
X
Zhu
Zhaorong
Z
Shi