Association between Retinal Vascular Geometric Changes and Cognitive Impairment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background and Purpose Previous studies have explored the association between retinal vascular changes and cognitive impairment. The retinal vasculature shares some characteristics with the cerebral vasculature, and quantitative changes in it could indicate cognitive impairment. Hence, a comprehensive meta-analysis was performed to clarify the potential relationship between retinal vascular geometric changes and cognitive impairment. Methods Relevant databases were scrupulously and systematically searched for retinal vascular geometric changes including caliber, tortuosity, and fractal dimension (FD), and for cognitive impairment. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used to evaluate the methodological quality of included studies. RevMan was used to perform the meta-analysis and detect publication bias. Sensitivity analyses were also performed. Results Five studies that involved 2,343 subjects were finally included in the meta-analysis. The results showed that there was no significant association between central retinal artery equivalents (Z=1.17) or central retinal venular equivalents (Z=1.74) and cognitive impairment (both p>0.05). Similarly, no significant difference was detected in retinal arteriolar tortuosity (Z=0.91) and venular tortuosity (Z=1.31) (both p>0.05). However, the retinal arteriolar FD (mean difference: -0.03, 95% CI: -0.05, -0.01) and venular FD (mean difference: -0.03, 95% CI: -0.05, -0.02) were associated with cognitive impairment. Conclusions A smaller retinal microvascular FD might be associated with cognitive impairment. Further large-sample and well-controlled original studies are required to confirm the present findings.