Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Risk of Alzheimer Disease and Mortality: A Latent Class Approach

Background Cardiovascular risk factors co‐occur with one another, and little is known about the extent of their clustering and risk of Alzheimer disease (AD). We identify groups of cardiovascular risk factors in cognitively normal individuals and investigate between‐group differences in incident AD and death. Methods and Results Cognitively normal individuals were recruited from the National Alzheimer's Coordinator Center. A latent class analysis was conducted with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, heart condition, stroke, smoking history, diabetes, and high body mass index. Between‐group differences in the incidence of AD, mortality, and mortality‐adjusted AD were investigated. This study included 12 412 cognitively normal individuals (average follow‐up, 65 months). Three groups were identified: (1) low probabilities of cardiovascular risk factors (reference; N=5398 [43%]), (2) hypertension and hypercholesterolemia (vascular‐dominant; N=5721 [46%]), and (3) hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, and high body mass index (vascular‐metabolic; N=1293 [10%]). Both vascular groups were significantly older, had more men, were slightly less educated, and were slightly more cognitively impaired than the reference group (all P