A new study suggests adults who avoid three specific conditions during middle age extend the health of the brain.
A new study out of NYU Langone Health shows adults who kept normal blood pressure, avoided diabetes and didn't smoke between ages 48 and 68 gained nearly 13 more years of life without dementia compared with those with all three risk factors.
For the study, published in Neurology Open Access, researchers analyzed data from the community-based Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, which has followed participants since 1986. The team looked at 12,409 people with an average age of 56 who were free of dementia at the outset and tracked them for an average of 26 years. During that period, 3,008 participants developed dementia and 5,238 died without developing it.
Participants with none of the three risk factors lived without dementia for nearly 13 years longer than those with all three, remaining dementia-free for 30 years after the study began compared with 17 years for the highest-risk group.
The researchers also examined how these midlife vascular risk factors affected dementia-free survival across different groups. Women with all three risk factors remained dementia-free for an average of 18.1 years from the start of tracking compared with 16.6 years for men. White participants with all three risk factors stayed dementia-free for an average of 19.6 years compared with 16 years for Black participants.
“These results suggest that vascular risk reduction may benefit all groups, but that certain populations, such as Black adults, may especially benefit from targeted prevention efforts,” said study author Josef Coresh, professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone. “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. Discovering new ways to delay dementia is crucial with 42 percent of Americans at risk for developing the condition at any time after age 55.”
Data from NYU Langone Health