The Associations between Arsenic in Drinking Water and Dementia in Taiwan

  • 蔡 馥宇

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations of arsenic in drinking water and dementia Methods: This study analyzed the National Health Insurance Database and arsenic exposure data in Taiwan where a cohort of 196 958 members with age of 40 or above in 1998 was followed Individuals under 40 years of age in 1998 were excluded because they were unlikely to drink water from wells as the tap water system had been constructed widely throughout Taiwan in the 1970s Arsenic exposures were divided into endemic (Chia-Yi Tainan and Yi-Lan Counties) and nonendemic areas (other cities/counties) We identified 8 836 cases with dementia they were newly diagnosed between January 1 1998 and December 31 2010 In further analyses we divided the study cohort into two major groups: 40-65 years old and over 65 years old We used chi-square tests to evaluate differences in the distributions of categorical variables between cases and the rest of 188 122 cohort members Multivariate logistic regression analyses were then applied to assess the associations between arsenic exposure and dementia Results: The average age of study population was 54 0 years (SD=10 9) For those with dementia the average age was 67 4 years (SD=10 1 p
Date of Award2019
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorHow-Ran Guo (Supervisor)

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