Association between myasthenia gravis and Alzheimer's disease.

Abstract

Introduction: Myasthenia gravis (MG) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are two of the most important diseases where the dysregulation of acetylcholine activity plays a crucial role. In the first, this dysregulation happens at the level of the neu-romuscular junction and in the second, in the central nervous system (CNS).

Aim: To analyze the possible relationship between these two pathologies, analyzing the prevalence and the odds ratio of AD within patients previously diagnosed with MG. We will compare these data with respect to the prevalence of AD in the general population.

Patients and methods: We examined the data obtained by the electronic medical records of patients in the health care system of Castilla La Mancha using the Natural Language Process provided by a clinical platform of artificial intelligence known as the Savana Manager?.

Results: We identified 970,503 patients over the age of 60 years, of which 1,028 were diagnosed with MG. The proportion of the patients diagnosed with AD within this group (4.28%) was greater than the rest of the population (2.82%) (p = 0,0047) with an odds ratio of 1.54 (confidence interval at 95% 1.13-2.08; p = 0.0051) without finding significant differences in the bivariate analysis for the rest of the most important actual known risk factors for AD.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that there might be an increase in the prevalence of AD in patients previously diagnosed with MG.