Brachial Flow-mediated Dilation and Risk of Dementia

Introduction: Brachial flow-mediated dilation (FMD) is a physiologic measure of endothelial function. We determined the prospective association of brachial FMD with incident dementia among older adults. Methods: We included 2777 Cardiovascular Health Study participants who underwent brachial FMD measurement. Incident dementia was ascertained by medication use, International Classification of Diseases-9 codes, requirement for a proxy, and death certificates and calibrated to gold-standard assessments performed in a subset of the cohort. Results: Mean participant age at time of brachial FMD measurement was 77.9 years. We identified 1650 incident dementia cases (median follow-up=10.5 y). After adjusting for age, race, sex, education, clinic site, and baseline arterial diameter, risk of dementia for participants in the highest quartile of percent brachial FMD did not differ from those in lowest quartile (hazard ratio=0.89, 95% confidence interval: 0.77, 1.03). Conclusions: Brachial FMD, measured late in life, is not associated with an increased risk of incident dementia.