A Healthy Lifestyle Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

A UK retrospective cohort study suggested that a favorable lifestyle was associated with a lower dementia risk among participants with high genetic risk. The study included a total of 196 383 individuals (mean 64.1 years; 52.7% women) from 2006 to 2010, and followed up for 1 545 433 person-years (median follow-up, 8.0 years). Overall, 68.1% of participants followed a favorable lifestyle, 23.6% followed an intermediate lifestyle, and 8.2% followed an unfavorable lifestyle. Twenty percent had high polygenic risk scores, 60% had intermediate risk scores, and 20% had low risk scores. Of the participants with high genetic risk, 1.23% developed dementia compared with 0.63% of the participants with low genetic risk (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.91). Of the participants with a high genetic risk and unfavorable lifestyle, 1.78% developed dementia compared with 0.56% of participants with low genetic risk and favorable lifestyle (HR, 2.83); while among participants with high genetic risk, 1.13% of those with a favorable lifestyle developed dementia (HR, 0.68) compared with an unfavorable lifestyle . Genetic risk and healthy lifestyle were independently associated with risk of incident all-cause dementia. There was no significant interaction between genetic risk and lifestyle factors. Source: https://jamanetwork.com/