Alcohol use disorder is linked to higher dementia risk in women
Hospital-recorded alcohol use disorder was linked to all-cause dementia with a hazard ratio of 3.73 compared with controls, peaking before age 70.
medRxiv
In a prospective cohort of 1,288,359 UK women followed for more than 20 years, researchers tracked 20,070 women with hospital-recorded alcohol use disorder matched to 100,339 controls. Dementia developed in 3,774 women with alcohol use disorder and 8,239 controls.
Alcohol use disorder was associated with all-cause dementia, with a hazard ratio of 3.73. The strongest associations emerged for mixed dementia (hazard ratio 5.03), unspecified dementia (4.29), and vascular dementia (3.96). The link was substantially stronger before age 70 years (hazard ratio 10.68) than at ages 70 to 79 (3.75) or 80 and older (2.34). Risk remained elevated with a 15-year exposure lag (hazard ratio 2.16) and after accounting for competing mortality. Associations with self-reported alcohol consumption were substantially weaker.
Why it matters
The findings suggest that clinically recognised alcohol use disorder is associated with prolonged dementia risk, particularly at younger ages and for vascular and mixed subtypes. They also indicate that clinical diagnoses track risks that drinking quantity alone does not capture.
Caveats
Because the study relies on observational hospital records, it cannot determine causality and likely captures only more severe cases of alcohol misuse. The report is a preprint and has not yet completed peer review.
The paper
University of Oxford
medRxiv · 29 Sep 2026 · Preprint, not peer-reviewed