Study: Education and lifestyle helped over a million older Americans avoid serious cognitive problems in 2017

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Study: More U.S. seniors, espe­cial­ly women, retain­ing health brains (UPI):

The per­cent­age of old­er Amer­i­cans report­ing seri­ous prob­lems with mem­o­ry and think­ing has declined in recent years — and high­er edu­ca­tion lev­els may be part of the rea­son, a new study finds.

Researchers found that between 2008 and 2017, the pro­por­tion of old­er U.S. adults report­ing “seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems” declined from just over 12% to 10% … Many stud­ies have linked high­er edu­ca­tion lev­els to a low­er risk of impaired think­ing and demen­tia, said lead researcher Esme Fuller-Thom­son, direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s Insti­tute for Life Course and Aging. One the­o­ry — the “cog­ni­tive reserve” hypoth­e­sis — is that peo­ple with more edu­ca­tion are bet­ter able to with­stand the patho­log­i­cal brain changes that mark the demen­tia process.

The Study:

A Decade of Decline in Seri­ous Cog­ni­tive Prob­lems Among Old­er Amer­i­cans: A Pop­u­la­tion-Based Study of 5.4 Mil­lion Respon­dents (Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease). From the Abstract:

  • Back­ground: Numer­ous stud­ies sug­gest the preva­lence of demen­tia has decreased over the past sev­er­al decades in West­ern coun­tries. Less is known about whether these trends dif­fer by gen­der or age cohort, and if gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment explain these trajectories.
  • Objec­tive: 1) To detect tem­po­ral trends in the age-sex-race adjust­ed preva­lence of seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems among Amer­i­cans aged 65+; 2) To estab­lish if these tem­po­ral trends dif­fer by gen­der and age cohort; 3) To exam­ine if these tem­po­ral trends are atten­u­at­ed by gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in edu­ca­tion­al attainment.
  • Meth­ods: Sec­ondary analy­sis of 10 years of annu­al nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive data from the Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey with 5.4 mil­lion com­mu­ni­ty-dwelling and insti­tu­tion­al­ized old­er adults aged 65+. The ques­tion on seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems was, “Because of a phys­i­cal, men­tal, or emo­tion­al con­di­tion, does this per­son have seri­ous dif­fi­cul­ty con­cen­trat­ing, remem­ber­ing, or mak­ing decisions?”
  • Results: The preva­lence of seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems in the US pop­u­la­tion aged 65 and old­er declined from 12.2% to 10.0% between 2008 and 2017. Had the preva­lence remained at the 2008 lev­els, there would have been an addi­tion­al 1.13 mil­lion old­er Amer­i­cans with seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems in 2017. The decline in mem­o­ry prob­lems across the decade was high­er for women (23%) than for men (13%). Adjust­ing for edu­ca­tion sub­stan­tial­ly atten­u­at­ed the decline.
  • Con­clu­sion: Between 2008 and 2017, the preva­lence of seri­ous cog­ni­tive impair­ment among old­er Amer­i­cans declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly, although these declines were par­tial­ly attrib­ut­able to gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in edu­ca­tion­al attainment.

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