Mental health determines the risk of developing dementia at an early age

Medical Facts Editorial / Janine Budding January 7, 2024 – 7:21 pm

BWhen developing dementia at a young age, people often think of a genetic cause. Scientists from Maastricht University (UM) and the University of Exeter in the UK have identified 15 risk factors associated with an increased risk of developing dementia at an early age. People can influence some of these risk factors themselves. In addition to a person's socioeconomic status or well-known lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption and smoking, scientists have also discovered a strikingly strong link to mental health: depression and social isolation in particular – for example as a result of hearing damage – appear to affect mental health. It is a good predictor of increased risk of developing dementia by age 65 years. The results were recently published in the scientific journal JAMA Neuroscience.

Dementia at an early age

Dementia is receiving increasing attention, but relatively little research has been conducted on early-onset dementia. Early-onset dementia occurs when people develop dementia before the age of 65 years. In the Netherlands, this fate affects approximately 15,000 people, and between 1,000 and 1,500 cases are added every year, according to previous research conducted by the same scientists. Early recognition, appropriate help and support can improve the quality of life of people with dementia at an early age. This was also the main reason that prompted UM researcher Steffi Hendricks and her colleagues from the Alzheimer's Center in Limburg to look for risk factors that might be linked to dementia at an early age. “The impact of dementia at a young age is very large, because these people usually have work, children and busy lives,” Hendricks says. “The cause of dementia at an early age is often thought to be genetic, but for many people we don't know exactly what the cause is. That's why we also wanted to investigate other risk factors in this study.”

Risk factors

In their research, the Maastricht scientists used data from a so-called long-term cohort study from the United Kingdom, the British Biobank. They analyzed data on more than 350,000 individuals, who were closely monitored by British researchers between 2006 and 2021. These data revealed 15 risk factors that appear, to a greater or lesser extent, to predict an increased risk of developing dementia at an early age. “We already knew from research on people with dementia at older ages that there are a series of modifiable risk factors,” says Sebastian Köhler, professor of neuroepidemiology at Maastricht University. “They are now paying great attention to prevention in the Netherlands, for example within the framework of the National Dementia Strategy of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. In addition to physical factors, mental health also plays an important role in the prevention of dementia, such as avoiding chronic stress, loneliness and depression. Fact That we are seeing this strongly now in dementia at an earlier age was unexpected for me and may give us scope to reduce risk in this group as well.

Source: Maastricht University

Medical Facts Editorial / Janine Budding

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