two new risk factors identified

2024-08-07 03:45:04

The stakes are high. It’s almost half The incidence of dementia can be avoided or delayed by acting on fourteen risk factors from childhood. This is the end of itstudy published in the journal The lancet Wednesday July 31. This work, presented in Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC 2024)They were put out by the Commission on aging set up by The lancet in 2017. 27 experts carefully reviewed the literature and calculated a relative risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease for each risk factor.

The number of people suffering from dementia is expected to nearly triple by 2050. This represents a health and social cost of more than 1,000 billion US dollars (927 billion euros) each year, concluded the researchers. . Alzheimer’s disease, which affects 50 million people, is the leading cause of dementia.

Amyloid plaque research issue

In view of the new work, the panel experts have listed two new risks: hypercholesterolemia, from the age of 40, which is responsible for 7% of cases of dementia, and the loss of vision that is not treated later in life.

These are in addition to the twelve risk factors already known in 2020: low level of education, hearing loss, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, depression, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, excessive alcohol consumption, head trauma, air pollution and social isolation. They are responsible for 40% of cases of dementia.

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“Increase our efforts in prevention”

Another, new risk factor: untreated vision loss. Authors trust “important new data”, with a theoretical analysis of the following 14 cohort studies. More precisely: research shows that people with treated cataracts reduce their risk of dementia.