Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia, but the environmental factors associated with the development of AD remain incompletely identified. This study explored the relationship between 4171 environmental factors and AD in a very comprehensive way using genetic and phenotypic data from 502,493 subjects in the UK Biobank. The investigators first used a phenotype-wide association analysis, which initially identified 84 environmental factors that were associated with AD. Based on this, prospective cohort analysis and image association analysis were used to confirm that 39 of these environmental factors were significantly associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. A Mendelian randomization approach further demonstrated a causal effect of 21 of these factors in the development of AD. These analyses suggest that people with higher education, larger body size, more non-adipose tissue, more computer use, and better baseline cognition have a lower risk of developing the disease, whereas overeating, excessive exercise, prolonged outdoor exposure, lipid metabolism disorders, and simvastatin use increase the risk of developing AD. This study integrates genetic, clinical, and imaging data in a multidimensional manner, providing the first comprehensive and rigorous study of wide-area environmental factors and providing important targets and reliable evidence for AD prevention.

Full Article:

Chen, S-D ., Zhang, W., Li, Y-Z. et al. Signal propagation in complex networks. Phy Rep 1017, 1–96 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.08.002

About Our Author: 

Dr. Yuzhu Li (First Author)

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr Li is interested in genetic and neural mechanisms of sleep disorder and the risk factors of psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative disorders. She has published papers in Nature Aging, Molecular Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry etc.