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 Researchers examined data from four previously published studies
that tracked a total of almost 30,000 people for at least a decade.
In each of the smaller studies, there was a clear connection between
anxiety in midlife and dementia later on, researchers report in BMJ
Open.
"If people are living with moderate to severe anxiety we would
encourage them to seek help," said senior study author Natalie
Marchant of University College London in the UK.
"Therapies already exist that have been shown to be effective for
treating anxiety (for example talking therapies and
mindfulness-based interventions), and while we do not yet know
whether they would also reduce risk of developing dementia,
alleviation of anxiety symptoms and stress would be a definite
benefit to (the) patient," Marchant said by email.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how anxiety might directly contribute to the development of
dementia. Researchers were also unable to formally pool all the data
from the four smaller studies, so they couldn't calculate the
magnitude of the increased dementia risk associated with anxiety.
It’s possible dementia might follow an anxiety diagnosis in middle
age because moderate to severe anxiety appears to increase stress
hormones, and chronic elevation of these hormones may consequently
damage brain regions such as those associated with memory, Marchant
said.
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Scientists don’t yet know whether treating anxiety, and thus
reducing the chronic elevation of these hormones, would reduce risk
for dementia, Marchant added.
Anxiety can also be a symptom of dementia, and that makes it
difficult to firmly establish whether it's also an independent risk
factor for dementia, said Dr. Costantino Iadecola, director of the
Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell
Medicine in New York City.
"Anxiety disorders need to be treated in their own right,
independently of potential associations (causal or not) with
cognitive impairment later in life," Iadecola, who wasn’t involved
in the study, said by email. "I would stress the importance of
treating anxiety disorders as an essential step in maintaining
mental health, not because of possible links to dementia, which
remain unproven."
The current study isn’t designed to explain how anxiety and dementia
might be connected, Iadecola added.
"We cannot say with confidence that anxiety is a cause (risk
factor), an early manifestation of the dementia, or only
coincidentally associated with it," Iadecola added.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2HCKWXP BMJ Open, online April 30, 2018.
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