Abstract INTRODUCTION We identified comorbidities associated with dementia and assessed the impact of comorbidity clusters on dementia patients’ cognitive trajectories in a real‐world Brazilian memory‐clinic cohort. METHODS We analyzed 500 individuals. Ridge‐penalized logistic regressions assessed associations between comorbidities and dementia. Tetrachoric correlations and hierarchical clustering informed mixed‐effects analyses of longitudinal trajectories. RESULTS Fazekas score ≥ 2 (odds ratio OR 2.48, 95% confidence interval CI 1.64–4.54), stroke (OR 2.15, 95% CI 1.23–3.23), alcohol abuse (OR 2.13, 95% CI 1.22‐4.92), hearing loss (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.06–3.94), visual loss (OR 1.94, 95% CI 1.04–4.01), and low education (OR 1.21, 95% CI 1.09–1.54) were associated with dementia cross‐sectionally. Comorbidities formed four clusters: cerebrovascular, cardiometabolic, neurosensory, substance abuse. Higher cerebrovascular burden predicted a 158% faster rate of cognitive decline in individuals with dementia. DISCUSSION Our findings show four dementia comorbidity clusters and identify cerebrovascular burden as a prognostic marker of faster cognitive decline.
Lazzaretti et al. (Wed,) studied this question.