WEDNESDAY, April 22, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- There is a cross-sectional association between anemia and higher levels of Alzheimer disease (AD) biomarkers and a longitudinal association with dementia risk, according to a study published online April 17 in JAMA Network Open.
Martina Valletta, M.D., from the Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University, and colleagues used data from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen, involving adults aged 60 years or older to examine the association between hemoglobin and AD blood biomarker levels and with incident dementia. Participants were followed up every three or six years according to age.
The study included 2,282 dementia-free participants. The researchers found that 362 participants (15.9 percent) developed dementia during a mean follow-up of 9.3 years. Individuals with anemia had higher baseline levels of phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217), neurofilament light chain (NfL), and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) compared with those with a normal hemoglobin level (β = 0.22, 0.25, and 0.08, respectively). They also had a higher risk for developing dementia during follow-up (hazard ratio [HR], 1.66). The highest hazard of dementia was seen for those with both anemia and high p-tau217, NfL, or GFAP (e.g., adjusted HR, 3.64 for those with anemia and high NfL).
"Our findings suggest anemia is a clinically relevant factor in the context of dementia risk stratification and is possibly a modifiable target in dementia prevention strategies," the authors write.