The Los Angeles Times (3/19, Healy) “Science Now” blog reports that a study published online March 18 in the journal Neurology “distills a way for physicians and their patients, in the course of a regular office visit, to measure an individual’s risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, or MCI.” The study found that “in a population of 1,449 Minnesotans 70 to 89 years old, the resulting algorithm helped identify individuals whose scores were in the top 25% and who were more than seven times more likely to develop MCI than those in the bottom quartile of risk.” An accompanying editorial by Alzheimer’s researcher Dr. Timo Grimmer and cognitive neuroscientist Alan B. Zonderman, of the National Institutes of Health, “said the study offers physicians and their patients some key guidance on how to lower risk of dementia, starting in midlife: for women, avoid or stop smoking, and for men, stay trim.”
Related Links:
— “Measuring dementia risk: Now there’s a number for that, too,”Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2015.