|
 Heart risk factors are well known to affect cognitive skills in old
age, but these results show that risk factors starting in childhood
may affect thinking decades later, the study team writes in Journal
of the American College of Cardiology.
“This study underlines the beneficial role of healthy lifestyle for
brain and cardiovascular health,” said lead author Suvi Rovio, a
senior researcher at the Research Center of Applied and Preventive
Cardiovascular Medicine in the University of Turku.
“High blood pressure, elevated serum cholesterol levels and smoking
are risk factors that are modifiable e.g. through healthy lifestyle
choices,” Rovio told Reuters Health by email.
To examine the link between childhood risk factors and mental
function in middle age, the study team used data from the Young
Finns Study, which followed over 3,500 children starting in 1980 and
continuing through 2011.
The participants were between 3 and 18 years old when they joined
the study and they had regular assessments of blood pressure,
cholesterol, body mass index (BMI, a measure of weight relative to
height) and other aspects of health including smoking status up to
age 24.
In 2011, more than 2,000 participants between the ages of 34 and 49
underwent cognitive testing, including assessments of visual memory,
memory of past events and visual learning ability.
Researchers found that people with high blood pressure and high
cholesterol in their youth were likely to have worse visual memory,
memory of life events and visual learning when they reached middle
age.
Smoking during adolescence and young adulthood was also linked to
worse memory and learning in midlife.
Heart risk factors carried the same risk of cognitive problems later
in life regardless of whether a participant had them during
childhood, adolescence or young adulthood.
Having two or three heart risk factors at a young age also carried a
greater risk of cognitive decline in middle age than having only
one.
[to top of second column] |
Researchers calculated the difference in midlife cognitive
performance between people who had no heart risk factors in youth
and those who had all the risk factors during two phases of youth,
such as adolescence and young adulthood. It was equivalent to an
additional six years of aging.
“Cognitive impairment is a major cause of morbidity and impaired
quality of life in older age,” said Norrina Allen, coauthor of an
editorial accompanying the study.
“Findings ways to prevent declines in cognitive function are
critical to improving the health of our populations as they age,”
said Allen, a public health researcher at Northwestern University in
Chicago who was not involved in the study.
“A focus on good health early in life can result in better cognitive
function in older age,” Allen said. “We need to focus on maintaining
our health starting in very early childhood and throughout
adulthood.”
“Adopting healthy lifestyle choices throughout the life-course is an
effective way to affect the cardiovascular risk factors and increase
the possibilities to cognitively vital adulthood and old age,” Rovio
said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2qsBdtT Journal of the American College of
Cardiology, online May 1, 2017.
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
