According to a new study,mental decline sets in by the age of 45, much earlier than previously thought.
Experts said that efforts to prevent dementia should start in middle age, as the most comprehensive study to date found that people’s cognitive powers are already waning by their mid-40s. Previously scientists had believed that there was no significant degeneration before the age of 60.
Poor cognitive status is perhaps the single most disabling condition in old age. As life expectancy continues to increase, understanding cognitive aging will be one of the challenges of this century.
Memory, reason and comprehension tests conducted on 7,000 British civil servants over a decade found decaying cognitive abilities even among the youngest in the sample, who were 45 at the start of the research. People in their late 40s saw their scores in mental reasoning tests decline by an average of 3.6 per cent by the time they were retested ten years later, according to research from the Whitehall II study— a follow-on to the Whitehall study, which also looked at civil servants — published in the British Medical Journal.
Anne Corbett, Research Manager of the Alzheimer’s Society said: “This large, important study adds vital information to the debate over when cognitive decline begins. However, the study does not tell us whether any of these people went on to develop dementia, nor how feasible it would be for GPs to detect these early changes.
“More research is now needed to help us fully understand how measurable changes in the brain can help us improve diagnosis of dementia.” ~ The Times
Source: The Times Whitehall II Study
