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A common blood test already carried out during routine health checks may contain clues about a person's long-term risk of dementia, according to research being presented at the ECNP Congress in Munich and published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

The study followed 316,542 Korean adults aged 40 and older who had a national health screening in 2004–2005, then used national health insurance records to track new dementia diagnoses until the end of 2019—up to 15 years later. The researchers categorized the participants into five groups, from the 20% with the lowest hemoglobin levels to the 20% with the highest hemoglobin levels.

Researchers found that people in the lowest 20% of hemoglobin levels had a 16% higher risk of all-cause dementia than those in the group with the lowest dementia rate, while those in the highest 20% had a 7% higher risk.

The pattern differed by dementia type. For Alzheimer's disease, the increased risk was mainly seen among the 20% of people with the lowest hemoglobin levels, who had a 14% higher risk than the reference group.

For vascular dementia (caused by reduced blood flow to the brain), the 20% with the lowest hemoglobin levels had a 19% higher risk, whereas the 20% with the highest hemoglobin levels had an 18% greater risk of developing dementia. For vascular dementia, however, the relationship did not follow a simple pattern across all five hemoglobin groups.

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