Word: dementia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...important to figure out who is at high risk and low risk, so that as we develop tools for prevention, we can try to target our prevention efforts at people with the highest risk for developing dementia," says Barnes, lead author of the new report published today in the journal Neurology. (Read "Advances for Alzheimer's, Outside...
...Barnes and her colleagues studied 3,375 patients age 65 years or older who were enrolled in a study analyzing heart disease and cognition. Researchers recorded which of the patients developed dementia in the six-year study period, then isolated the risk factors that appeared to make dementia more likely. Many factors were considered: age, genetic risk factors, mental health status, depression, physical fitness, alcohol consumption, fine motor skills and social support. In the end, only a handful of factors, arranged on a 15-point scale, emerged as being highly predictive of dementia...
...Volunteers who scored eight points or higher on the index - which includes older age, worse cognitive function, some heart disease risk factors and the presence of genes linked to Alzheimer's - were at high risk of developing dementia within six years; 56% of these high scorers showed serious mental decline by the end of the study period. Of those scoring lower on the index, deemed at moderate or low risk, 23% were diagnosed with dementia. (Read "Alzheimer's Research Holds Promise...
...Many of the risk factors included in the new screen are familiar: advanced age and the presence of Alzheimer's genes (which are associated with the growth of fatty plaques and tangles in the brain that gum up neural connections), for example, have long been clearly linked to dementia. Even heart disease risk factors are somewhat expected, since recent studies show that the same conditions that boost the risk of heart attack, such as high cholesterol, hypertension and atherosclerosis, may also raise the risk of dementia; the theory is that whatever is causing fat deposits in heart vessels may also...
...some of the elements in the index were more surprising. The research team found, for instance, that patients who were underweight, did not drink alcohol and took longer to put on and button a shirt were also at high risk for dementia. Barnes speculates that fine motor skills, such as those required to button a shirt, may be one of the first things to suffer as neural connections in the brain succumb to dementia. As for the alcohol connection, she suggests that people who drink alcohol may simply be healthier overall and therefore less vulnerable than others to mental decline...