Glucosamine supplementation may lowers risk of incident vascular dementia among elderly

This study, "Habitual glucosamine use, APOE genotypes, and risk of incident cause-specific dementia in the older population" by Chun Zhou is published in Alzheimer's Research & Therapy.

There is uncertainty about glucosamine usage and incident dementia in the older population. In this study of 214,945 participants over 60, researchers evaluated the longitudinal association between habitual glucosamine supplements and the risk of cause-specific dementia. They examined the possible effect modifiers on this association. The information was available on glucosamine use. The participants did not have dementia at baseline in the UK Biobank. A combination variant of rs429358 and rs7412 determined the APOE genotypes.

The primary outcome measured in the study was incident vascular dementia, incident Alzheimer's disease, and incident frontotemporal dementia, respectively.

The key results of the study are:

• The median follow-up duration was 12 years.
• In this follow-up duration, vascular dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and frontotemporal dementia were developed in 1039, 1774, and 122 participants, respectively.
• Habitual glucosamine use lowered the risk of incident vascular dementia with an adjusted HR of 0.82.
• This had no association with incident Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia, with adjusted HR of 1.02 and 0.95, respectively.
• Those with concomitant calcium supplementation and those without concomitant zinc supplementation had an inverse association between habitual glucosamine use and incident vascular dementia.
• APOE ε4 dosage and baseline cognitive function did not modify the relationships of glucosamine use with incident vascular dementia or Alzheimer's disease

They concluded that regardless of APOE genotypes and baseline cognitive function, habitual glucosamine has an inverse association with incident vascular dementia in the older population.

Further reading:

https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-023-01295-6