Association of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with cognitive decline in very elderly men

To determine the change in cognitive function in very elderly men with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) over a 3-year period relative to age-and education-matched controls.

In this hospital-based, prospective case-control study, we evaluated a consecutive series of 110 very elderly men with COPD and 110 control subjects who were hospitalized between January and December 2007. All the subjects performed cognitive tests at baseline and underwent annual evaluations (for 3 years), which included the Mini-Mental State Examination, word list recall, delayed recall, animal category fluency, and the symbol digit modalities test.

In mixed-effects models adjusted for hypertension and coronary heart disease, COPD was associated with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline based on the Mini-Mental State Examination, word list recall, delayed recall, animal category fluency, and the symbol digit modalities test (all p < 0.01) compared to controls.

COPD is associated with a more rapid rate of cognitive decline in very elderly persons.