Differential effects of completed and incomplete pregnancies on the risk of Alzheimer disease
Date
2018Author
Jang, HyesueBae, Jong Bin
Dardiotis, Efthimios
Scarmeas, Nikolaos
Sachdev, Perminder S.
Lipnicki, Darren M.
Han, Ji Won
Kim, Tae Hui
Kwak, Kyung Phil
Kim, Bong Jo
Kim, Shin Gyeom
Kim, Jeong Lan
Moon, Seok Woo
Park, Joon Hyuk
Ryu, Seung-Ho
Youn, Jong Chul
Lee, Dong Young
Lee, Dong Woo
Lee, Seok Bum
Lee, Jung Jae
Jhoo, Jin Hyeong
Yannakoulia, Mary
Kosmidis, Mary H.
Hadjigeorgiou, Giorgos M.
Sakka, Paraskevi
Kim, Ki Woong
ISSN
1526-632XSource
NeurologyVolume
91Issue
7Pages
e643-e651Google Scholar check
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of completed pregnancy with childbirth and incomplete pregnancy without childbirth on the late-life cognition and the risk of Alzheimer disease (AD) in women. METHODS: Using the pooled data of 3,549 women provided by 2 population-based cohort studies, we conducted logistic regression analyses to examine retrospectively the associations of completed and incomplete pregnancy with the risks of mild cognitive impairment and AD. For women without dementia, we also conducted analyses of covariance to examine the associations of completed and incomplete pregnancy with Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score. RESULTS: Grand multiparous women who experienced ≥5 completed pregnancies showed an ≈1.7-fold higher risk of AD than those who experienced 1 to 4 completed pregnancies (odds ratio [OR] 1.68, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.04-2.72), while those who had incomplete pregnancies showed half the level of AD risk compared with those who never experienced an incomplete pregnancy (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.24-0.76 for 1 incomplete pregnancy OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.34-0.92 for ≥2 incomplete pregnancies). In women without dementia, the grand multiparous had worse MMSE scores than those with 1 to 4 completed pregnancies (p < 0.001), while those who experienced ≥1 incomplete pregnancies had better MMSE scores than those who never experienced an incomplete pregnancy (p = 0.008). CONCLUSIONS: Grand multiparity was associated with high risk of AD, while incomplete pregnancy was associated with low risk of AD in late life.