Higher education and language skills may help ward off dementia

Date:
March 3, 2022
Source:
University of Waterloo
Summary:
New research has found that people with mild cognitive impairment
may not inevitably develop dementia and, in fact, having higher
education and advanced language skills more than doubles their
chances of returning to normal.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
New research has found that people with mild cognitive impairment may
not inevitably develop dementia and, in fact, having higher education
and advanced language skills more than doubles their chances of returning
to normal.


==========================================================================
The study, led by researchers at the University of Waterloo, may reassure
those with mild cognitive impairment as it contradicts a common assumption
that the condition is simply an early stage of dementia. People with mild cognitive impairment show signs of cognitive decline, but not enough
to prevent them from performing typical daily tasks. They have been
considered at higher risk of progressing to the more severe cognitive
decline seen in dementia.

"Possessing high cognitive reserve -- based on education, high academic
grades, and written language skills -- may predict what happens years
after someone receives a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment," said
Suzanne Tyas, a professor in the School of Public Health Sciences at
Waterloo and lead author.

"Even after considering age and genetics -- established risk factors for dementia -- we found that higher levels of education more than doubled
the chances that people with mild cognitive impairment would return to
normal cognition instead of progressing to dementia." The study also
found that language skills, whether reflected in high grades in English
in school or in strong writing that was grammatically complex and full
of ideas, were also protective.

The researchers discovered that almost one-third of 472 women diagnosed
with mild cognitive impairment reverted to normal cognition at least
once over an average of eight-and-a-half years following their diagnosis,
with more than 80 per cent of them never developing dementia.

Almost another third of the total number progressed to dementia without
ever reverting to normal cognition, while three per cent stayed in
the mild cognitive impairment stage, and 36 per cent died. None of the participants reverted from dementia to mild cognitive impairment.

The researchers also highlighted that reverse transitions are much more
common than progressing to dementia in relatively younger individuals
who didn't carry a certain genetic risk factor and had high levels of
education and language skills.

"We can't do much about age and genetics, so it's encouraging that our
findings show that there are other ways to reduce the risk of dementia,
such as building cognitive reserve through education and language skills earlier in life," Tyas said.

The study's findings have implications for treatment and research in
people with mild cognitive impairment.

"If individuals with higher cognitive reserve are more likely to improve
even without treatment, then this needs to be taken into consideration
when recruiting participants for clinical trials of prospective treatments
and when interpreting the results of these trials," Tyas said, adding
there's no cure for most causes of dementia, so prevention is key.

For the analysis, researchers used complex modelling with data drawn from
a longitudinal study called the Nun Study, which looked at older, highly educated religious sisters. The participants were mostly homogeneous,
with similar socioeconomic status and marital and reproductive history, strengthening the conclusions of this work.

The study, published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American
Academy of Neurology, was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada. Co-authors include researchers from Nankai University in China, University of Kentucky, University of Manitoba and University of New
Mexico.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Waterloo. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Maryam Iraniparast, Yidan Shi, Ying Wu, Leilei Zeng, Colleen
J Maxwell,
Richard J Kryscio, Philip D St. John, Karen S SantaCruz, Suzanne
L Tyas.

Cognitive Reserve and Mild Cognitive Impairment: Predictors
and Rates of Reversion to Intact Cognition vs Progression to
Dementia. Neurology, 2022; 10.1212/WNL.0000000000200051 DOI:
10.1212/WNL.0000000000200051 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220303095634.htm

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