Vision improvement may cut prevalence of Dementia: study

The Results of the study are:

• The probability sample from the Health and Retirement Study included 16 690 participants
• The 12 dementia risk factors in the PAF model were associated with an estimated 62.4% of dementia cases in the US.
• The risk factor with the highest weighted PAF for dementia was hypertension (12.4%).
• The PAF of vision impairment was 1.8%, suggesting that more than 100 000 prevalent dementia cases in the US could potentially have been prevented through healthy vision.

Thus, existing life-course models of potentially modifiable dementia risk factors, such as the Lancet Commission's, may consider including vision impairment. Since a large majority of vision impairment can be treated with cost-effective but underused interventions, this may represent a viable target for future interventional research that aims to slow cognitive decline and prevent incident dementia.

Reference:

Addition of Vision Impairment to a Life-Course Model of Potentially Modifiable Dementia Risk Factors in the US by Joshua R. Ehrlich, et al. published in the JAMA Neurology.

doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.0723

Keywords:

Dementia, Prevalence, Reduced, Improving, Vision, Joshua R. Ehrlich, Jenna Goldstein, Bonnie K. Swenor, Heather Whitson, Kenneth M. Langa, Phillip Veliz,