As reported by<\/a> Medscape Medical News, 45% of dementia risk factors are potentially modifiable.<\/p>\nRisk factors identified in the Lancet report include less education in early life (contributing 5% to risk); hearing loss (7%), elevated low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (7%), depression (3%), traumatic brain injury (3%), physical inactivity (2%), diabetes (2%), smoking (2%), hypertension (2%), obesity (1%), and excessive alcohol (1%) in midlife; and social isolation (5%), air pollution (3%), and vision loss (2%) in late life.<\/p>\n
Looking at prevalence, investigators found that six of the 14 risk factors were more common in women, including physical inactivity, depression, smoking, poor sleep, less education and poor vision (for example, glaucoma or cataracts).<\/p>\n
Only three risk factors were more common in men, including hearing loss, diabetes, and alcohol use.<\/p>\n
There was no difference in prevalence between men and women in high BMI, hypertension, and social isolation.<\/p>\n
Plotting Cognition<\/p>\n
The Health and Retirement Study also gathers data on global cognition (immediate recall, delayed recall, numeracy, etc.) using a 27-item scale.<\/p>\n
Fitzhugh separated mean cognitive scores for men and women and for three age groups (middle age: 40-59 years; middle to older age: 60-79 years; and oldest age: 80 years and over), then plotted risk factors in each group.<\/p>\n
The graphs she created illustrate the differences in cognitive performance between having and not having a risk factor for each sex.<\/p>\n
For example, the diabetes plot shows this risk factor has a much bigger impact on cognition in women.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe line for men is relatively flat, so their cognition is really the same if they have diabetes or not, but for women, if they have diabetes, cognition is much lower compared to women who don\u2019t have diabetes\u201d, explained Fitzhugh.<\/p>\n
In addition to diabetes, other risk factors that have a greater cognitive impact on women included poor sleep, BMI, hypertension, poor vision, less education, and hearing loss.<\/p>\n
Along with high LDL, hearing loss is the largest modifiable risk factor, accounting for 7% of dementia risk, according to the Lancet Commission report. But even though more men have hearing loss across all ages, it appears to be more impactful on women in terms of cognition, said Fitzhugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we should be targeting women with hearing loss in middle to older age, making sure they get hearing aids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in her research, Fitzhugh found women with hearing loss have a greater risk for dementia than men with hearing loss. \u201cThere\u2019s something about hearing loss in women that is particularly detrimental.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cognitive impact of risk factors also varies by age, investigators found.<\/p>\n
Among women, the impact of hearing loss was greatest in middle to older age. Poor sleep only had a significant impact in middle age, which coincides with the menopause transition. And in the oldest age, less education was the only risk factor to have a significant impact on cognition.<\/p>\n
In men, only smoking had a greater cognitive impact, but interestingly, only in the older age group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way I think about age in this study is it\u2019s telling us when, potentially, we should be targeting these risk factors,\u201d said Fitzhugh.<\/p>\n
She recognizes this is \u201cjust a snapshot\u201d in time and said she\u2019d like to \u201cmap out\u201d how risk factors impact cognition over time.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the research, Liisa Galea, PhD, Treliving Family Chair in Women\u2019s Mental Health, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and professor of psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, said that more modifiable factors are associated with cognition in females than males is \u201cmost surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly these factors are important for everyone, but we need more targeted messaging to women across the lifespan about the importance of these variables for their brain health,\u201d Galea said.<\/p>\n
No outside funding was disclosed. Fitzhugh and Galea reported no conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 A number of modifiable risk factors are more common in women than in men and have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[27313,19000,18999,10454,49,48,10936,10237,6319,32441,84,13124,2108,24981,32442,11070,409,12314],"class_list":["post-46444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-alzheimer-disease-alzheimers-disease-alzheimers","tag-bmi","tag-body-mass-index","tag-brain","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cognition","tag-dementia","tag-depression","tag-glaucoma","tag-health","tag-hearing-loss","tag-hypertension","tag-lipids-lipids-management","tag-menopause-menopausal-syndrome","tag-otolaryngology-ent-specialty-ent-speciality","tag-sleep","tag-traumatic-brain-injury-tbi-traumatic-brain-injury-tbi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/ht-250804-megan-fitzhugh-120x156.jpg\")
Megan Fitzhugh, PhD<\/p>\n