Common mental health disorder may triple risk for developing dementia, study finds
CTV
As if people with anxiety don’t have enough to worry about, a new study is adding to that list — suggesting the disorder may nearly triple the risk of developing dementia years later.
As if people with anxiety don’t have enough to worry about, a new study is adding to that list — suggesting the disorder may nearly triple the risk of developing dementia years later.
The research, to the authors’ knowledge, is the first to look into the association between different severities of anxiety and dementia risk over time, and the effect of the timing of anxiety on this risk, according to the study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
“Anxiety can now be considered a non-traditional risk factor for dementia,” said Dr. Kay Khaing, lead study author and a specialist geriatrician at Hunter New England Health in Newcastle, Australia, via email.
More than 55 million people worldwide have dementia, a number expected to increase to 139 million by 2050. With the condition also being a leading cause of death, researchers and health professionals have directed their focus toward prevention, particularly by addressing risk factors such as anxiety or lifestyle habits.
Previous studies exploring the relationship between anxiety and dementia have largely measured participants’ anxiety at one point in time, providing mixed conclusions — but how long someone’s anxiety lasts is an important aspect worth considering, the authors argued.
The team studied 2,132 participants recruited from the Newcastle-based Hunter Community Study between December 2004 and December 2007. They were ages 60 to 81 or older, and at the study’s start provided health data such as tobacco use or alcohol intake, or whether they had conditions such as hypertension or diabetes.
There were three assessments, also called waves, each five years apart. Researchers measured participants’ anxiety at the first and second assessments. Chronic anxiety was defined as having anxiety at both the first and second waves. Someone’s anxiety was considered resolved if they had anxiety only at the time of the first wave. New-onset anxiety refers to anxiety identified only at the second wave.
