Home » Health » Identifying Key Risk Factors for Dementia: A Comprehensive Study of 220,000 British Adults

Identifying Key Risk Factors for Dementia: A Comprehensive Study of 220,000 British Adults

Researchers used data from 220,000 British adults aged 50 to 73 to come up with a ranking of the 11 strongest risk factors for contracting the disease, including living alone and having diabetes, reports The Times.

Doctors can enter individual information for each of these 11 factors into a simple online form, which then calculates a personalized percentage score to determine how likely each middle-aged patient is to develop dementia in the next 14 years.

The 11 key risk factors are:

age over 60; living alone; low level of education; having parents with dementia; coming from a disadvantaged background; male sex; diabetes; depression; stroke; high blood pressure; high cholesterol .

The authors of the study, published in the journal BMJ Mental Health, said the “easy-to-use tool” was by far the most accurate risk assessment, with most questions requiring simple yes/no answers. They hope that in future it could be widely used as a screening tool within the National Health Service (NHS) to place everyone over 50 into ‘risk groups’ for dementia.

Those who score high could be offered further tests, including memory assessments, brain scans and blood tests – helping to diagnose dementia early so more patients can benefit from breakthrough new treatments that are due to be entered.

People at high risk will also be encouraged to make lifestyle changes to help reduce their risk, such as eating healthier to lower cholesterol and prevent diabetes.

Research shows that four out of 10 cases of dementia could be prevented by improving lifestyle, including quitting smoking, losing weight and drinking less alcohol.

Lead author Dr Raihaan Patel, from the University of Oxford, said the tool – the UK Biobank Dementia Risk Score (UKBDRS) – needed further testing before it could be introduced more widely.

“The UKBDRS may best be used as an initial screening tool to stratify individuals into risk groups, and those identified as being at high risk may then benefit from more time-consuming follow-up assessments.” said Dr. Patel.

Implications for Alzheimer’s

The tool can also incorporate genetic test results, taking into account whether patients carry a mutated version of the APOE gene, which increases the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Co-lead author Professor Sana Suri added: “This risk score only tells us about our chances of developing dementia, it is not a definitive outcome. Given that some of the factors included in this score can be modified or treated, there things we can do to reduce the risk of dementia.”

“While advanced age (60 and over) and APOE confer the greatest risk, modifiable factors such as diabetes, depression and high blood pressure also play a critical role.”

“For example, the estimated risk for a person with all of these will be about three times that of a person of the same age who has none.” Suri also said

There are around 900,000 people with dementia in the UK and this number is expected to rise to 1.6 million by 2040 as the population ages.

Screening tools to identify people at risk are seen as key to improving early diagnosis rates – which will be vital to hopes of launching two new drugs, Donanemab and Lecanemab, which have been shown to slow Alzheimer’s disease.

A study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found that people over 60 who have an “unhealthy lifestyle” are more likely to need hospice care at an older age.

2023-08-25 08:45:15
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