MS and diabetes linked to risk of dementia

PEOPLE who suffer autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) may have an elevated risk of developing dementia, a new study suggests.

There are more than 80 types of autoimmune disease, including multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

These conditions occur when healthy cells are attacked by the body’s immune system. It has been suggested autoimmune and inflammatory activity may have a role in the development of dementia.

To investigate the link, researchers from the University of Oxford examined 25 autoimmune diseases.

The authors drew information on hospital admissions data between 1998 and 2012, during which period more than 1.8 million people were admitted with an autoimmune disease – ranging from 1,019 people with the rare condition Goodpasture syndrome, in which antibodies attack the lungs and kidneys, to 316,043 with rheumatoid arthritis.

Overall people admitted to hospital with an autoimmune disease were 20 per cent more likely to have a subsequent admission for dementia than those without an admission for an autoimmune disease.

The researchers emphasised that the size of the associations they found was small, so further research would be needed.

“Our findings should be considered as indicative rather than definitive,” the authors cautioned.

But they added: “People admitted to hospital with an autoimmune disease, likely to be those at the severe end of the disease spectrum, do appear to have an elevated risk of dementia.”