Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Education / 30.08.2016
Study Supportive of Modest Effect of Cognitive Activity on Prevention of Dementia
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Deborah Blacker MD, ScD
Director of the Gerontology Research Unit
Department of Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings
Response: Many observational studies have found that those who are cognitively active have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or any type of
dementia.
However, we and others have been concerned that these findings
might be spurious due to two potential biases:
- 1) confounding, meaning that those who are cognitively active have lower rates of Alzheimers disease for another reason, in particular the effect of greater education, which is associated with both lower risk of Alzheimers and higher levels of cognitive activity; and
- 2) reverse causation, meaning that theassociation could be due to a reduction in cognitive activity among those already in the long preclinical phase of cognitive decline before Alzheimers dementia (rather than the lack of cognitive activity causing the Alzheimers). Our study performed a systematic review of the literature on the association, and then a set of bias analyses to assess whether confounding or reverse causation could account for the observed associations.