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Updated: Oct 16, 2025

Application of Granger Causality Analysis of the Directed Functional Connection in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: August 7, 2017
Association between dementia and unintentional poisoning in Taiwan
Hsiang-I Wang1,2,3, Jen-Chun Wang2,4, Chi-Hsiang Chung5,6
1Department of Emergency Medicine, Taichung Armed Forces General Hospital, Taichung, 41168, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Purpose:
Older people with dementia are a particularly vulnerable group and have an increased risk of poisoning. We investigated the correlation between dementia and the risk of unintentional poisoning in a retrospective, longitudinal and nationwide population-based study.
Methods:
Overall, 27,438 patients with dementia were selected from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan between 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2010, and 109,752 controls were propensity score-matched by gender, age, index year, and presence of heart failure, liver disease, renal disease, and cancers. After adjustment for confounding factors, Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to compare the risk of poisoning during follow-up.
Results:
Among dementia patients, 100 (0.36%) had unintentional poisoning events compared to 350 (0.32%) controls. Cox proportional hazards regression revealed that the patients were more likely to develop poisoning than the controls (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.721, 95% CI = 2.162-3.424, p < 0.001). After adjustment for sex, age, monthly income, urbanization level, geographic region, and comorbidities, the HR for poisoning was 2.385 (95% CI = 1.883-3.021, p < 0.001).
Conclusions:
Patients with dementia have a high risk of unintentional poisoning, and appropriate prescription medications and careful review of dementia patient compliance are important.
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