New Delhi: Having normal blood pressure, being free of diabetes, and not smoking are associated with nearly 13 additional years of dementia-free life on average, a new study shows.
The findings, published in the journal Neurology, also show that regardless of their risk factors, women lived longer without dementia than men.
Researchers said the study results underscore the dual impact of the midlife risk factors, the presence of which is linked to both an accelerated dementia onset and a shortened overall dementia-free lifespan.
“Our findings argue that people need to actively avert these factors in midlife as a strategy for preserving brain health for more than a decade,” senior researcher Josef Coresh, founding director of Optimal Aging Institute, New York University, US, said.
The researchers analysed data of 12,409 people from the community-based Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, which started in 1986.
The participants aged 56 on average were followed for 26 years, during which period 3,008 developed dementia and 5,238 people died without developing dementia.
Those who had no risk factors lived without developing dementia nearly 13 years longer than people with the three risk factors — 30 years total after the study’s start versus 17 years.
“Individuals with zero midlife vascular risk factors (hypertension, diabetes, smoking) experienced approximately 13 additional dementia-free survival years compared with those with 3 vascular risk factors,” the authors wrote.
Women participants with all three risk factors lived an average of 18.1 years from the start of tracking without developing dementia, compared to 16.6 years for men participants, the study found.
The researchers acknowledged limitations to the study and said the study was not designed to prove that avoiding these vascular risk factors caused the observed delay in dementia — only that they were associated with each other.
Another limitation of the study was that the risk factor measurement was performed just once, so changes over time were not captured, they said.
