Exploring the Association Between Opioid Use Disorder and Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Among a National Sample of the U.S. Population

Past research suggests associations between heavy alcohol use and later life dementia. However, little is known about whether opioid use disorder (OUD) and dementia share this association, especially among age groups younger than 65 years old.

Examine the association between OUD and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and dementia.

Electronic health records between 2000 and 2021 for patients age 12 or older were identified in the Cerner Real-World database™. Patients with a prior diagnosis of dementia were excluded. Patients were followed for 1-10 years (grouped by one, three, five, and ten-year follow-up periods) in a matched retrospective cohort study. Cox proportional hazards regressions were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) of incident AD/dementia stratified by age and follow-up group.

A sample of 627,810 individuals with OUD were compared to 646,340 without OUD. Individuals with OUD exhibited 88% higher risk for developing AD/dementia compared to those without OUD (aHR = 1.88, 95% CI 1.74, 2.03) within 1 year follow-up and 211% (aHR = 3.11, 95% CI 2.63, 3.69) within 10 years follow-up. When stratifying by age, younger patients (age 12-44) had a greater disparity in odds of AD/dementia between OUD and non-OUD groups compared with patients older than 65 years.

Additional research is needed to understand why an association exists between OUD and AD/dementia, especially among younger populations. The results suggest that cognitive functioning screening programs for younger people diagnosed with OUD may be useful for targeting early identification and intervention for AD/dementia in particularly high risk and marginalized populations.