The report was compiled by the first Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention and Care, which brought together 24 experts from around the world to review scores of studies and synthesize them into a model showing how lifestyle modification could reduce dementia risk. Around 47 million people have dementia worldwide, and that number is projected to triple by 2050. The Lancet team considered each factor separately and also looked at how they related to one another to calculate how much modification of each could potentially affect a person’s dementia risk. In the past decade, research has increasingly pointed to controllable lifestyle factors as integral to reducing the risk of cognitive decline. Noting that modifying all nine factors could reduce the risk by 35 percent, he said, “Compare that to how we’re developing drugs to treat dementia.

Source: Washington Post July 20, 2017 04:07 UTC