Pace of walking and memory loss can predict dementia: study

People who tested positive for pre-dementia were twice as likely as others to develop dementia within 12 years. A team of researchers of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center led by Indian American Joe Verghese in a study titled “Motoric cognitive risk syndrome” said that in many clinical and community settings people don’t have access to the sophisticated tests-biomarker assays, cognitive tests or neuroimaging studies-used to diagnose people at risk for developing dementia. The assessment method by the team could enable many more people to learn if they are at risk for dementia since it avoids the need for complex testing and doesn’t require that the test be administered by a neurologist, Verghese said. “Evidence increasingly suggests that brain health is closely tied to cardiovascular health—meaning that treatable conditions such as hypertension, smoking, high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes can interfere with blood flow to the brain and thereby increase a person’s risk for developing Alzheimer’s and other dementias,” he said. “In addition, our group has shown that cognitively stimulating activities—playing board games, card games, reading, writing and also dancing—can delay dementia’s onset,” he said.