Predictors of Dementia in the Oldest Old: A Novel Machine Learning Approach

imageBackground:

Incidence of dementia increases exponentially with age; little is known about its risk factors in the ninth and 10th decades of life. We identified predictors of dementia with onset after age 85 years in a longitudinal population-based cohort.

Methods:

On the basis of annual assessments, incident cases of dementia were defined as those newly receiving Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) ≥1. We used a machine learning method, Markov modeling with hybrid density-based and partition-based clustering, to identify variables associated with subsequent incident dementia.

Results:

Of 1439 participants, 641 reached age 85 years during 10 years of follow-up and 45 of these became incident dementia cases. Using hybrid density-based and partition-based, among those aged 85+ years, probability of incident dementia was associated with worse self-rated health, more…

Read more…