Sleep Quality and Risk of Dementia Among Older Male Veterans

Objective: To determine whether a diagnosis of sleep disturbance is associated with dementia in older veterans. Methods: For this retrospective cohort study, we obtained medical record data from the Department of Veterans Affairs National Patient Care Database for 200,000 randomly selected veterans aged 55 years and older. Prevalent cases of dementia from the baseline period (2000-2003) were excluded, leaving an analytic sample of 179,738 male veterans. Follow-up took place from 2004 to 2011. The primary outcome was all-cause dementia, ascertained using International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision codes. Sleep disturbance, the primary predictor, was also ascertained using these codes. Results: After adjusting for potential confounders, those with sleep disturbance had a 27% increased risk of dementia (hazard ratio: 1.27; 95% confidence interval: 1.20-1.34). Conclusion: Sleep disturbance was associated with increased risk of dementia among a large cohort of older, primarily male veterans.