The risk of poorer brain health was more pronounced in people with cardiometabolic health conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and diabetes. The study is published in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease.
One in three people worldwide are living with two or more long-term health conditions, known as multimorbidity. The risk of multimorbidity increases with age and is thought to affect more than half of the global population aged 60 years and over. There is growing evidence that multimorbidity may further increase the risk of poor brain health, based on neuroimaging and cognitive outcomes. However, many of these studies have not looked at specific combinations or ‘clusters’ of related conditions.
Dementia has a long preclinical phase, during which neurodegenerative and cognitive changes begin to occur well before a formal diagnosis. Understanding the relationship between clusters of related conditions and their effect on brain health and cognitive decline is therefore important for understanding how they might affect future risk of dementia.
In this study, the researchers investigated whether multimorbidity was associated with poorer brain health in 43,160 participants in UK Biobank. Each of the participants underwent an MRI brain scan, provided information about their health and lifestyles, had physical measurements and blood samples taken, and took cognitive function tests. People who had self-reported a pre-existing neurological condition were excluded from the study.
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Population Health website.