A meta-analysis of cohort studies: Traumatic brain injury and risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

INTRODUCTION: Recently, some epidemiological studies have reported that cognitive disorders in elderly people is accelerated with traumatic brain injury. But the causal relationship between traumatic brain injury and AD is still an area of controversy. AIMS: Our review was conducted to estimate the relation between traumatic brain injury and risk of AD. METHODS: All longitudinal population-based studies comparing incidence of AD between subjects with and without traumatic brain injury from their inception to September 2020 were searched in The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Medline, Embase, Web of Science without restriction of language. The meta-analysis was conducted using Stata software. RESULTS: A total of 17 studies involving 4289,548 individuals were included. After pooling these 17 studies, subjects with traumatic brain injury had significant higher incidence of AD than those without traumatic brain injury (RR: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.05–1.29). When considering the severity of traumatic brain injury, this elevated risk of AD was still significant comparing subjects with moderate and severe traumatic brain injury and those with no traumatic brain injury (RR: 1.30, 95% CI: 1.01–1.59). CONCLUSION: Traumatic brain injury, especially moderate and severe traumatic brain injury may be associated with increased risk of AD.