2024-09-06 16:54:00
Sensory impairment will be the cause of Dementia
Previous research has found that there may be a link between hearing loss in the elderly and the onset of dementia.
In a new study, a group of health researchers and geriatrics specialists affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Michigan, and the Duke University School of Medicine conducted examined patients’ medical records and reported that approximately 1 in 5 cases of dementia can also be attributed to visual impairment in a community-based population of American adults aged 71 years and older.
Scientists still do not know what causes dementia, but they strongly suspect that it may be related to several factors. As the senses lose their acuity, he notes, the brain must work fully to understand the external environment, all while allowing its own aging process. The result can be a loss of cognitive abilities and memory.
In this new effort, researchers looked for evidence of this in people older than 71 years who had experienced at least one of the three main types of vision impairment: near or distance visual acuity, or contrast sensitivity.
The research team studied data from 2,767 people in the US who were alive in 2021 and over the age of 71. For each person studied, the team looked for any evidence of vision loss or brain damage. They found that approximately 19% of dementia cases can be attributed to one or more types of vision loss. This, they point out, suggests that dementia could have been prevented in almost 20% of cases if vision loss had been addressed. Previous studies have shown that about 90% of vision problems in older people can be corrected with glasses or surgery.
The research team admits that their results are based on associations rather than evidence, as there is no way to prove a cause of dementia, but they also suggest that the associations they found make a strong argument in favor of dementia.
The article was published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.
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