Common infections such as the flu and respiratory tract infections may increase the risk of dementia years later, according to a new study published in Nature Aging.
Three notes:
- The study is based on researchers' analysis of data in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, which is one of the nation's longest-running studies of aging. They examined how brain volume changed in 982 participants with and without history of infection. Changes in brain volume were tracked through magnetic resonance imaging analysis, which began in 2009.
- Of the 15 infections examined during the study, six — including flu, herpes and respiratory tract infections — were linked to accelerated brain volume loss. Researchers conducted further analyses using data from nearly 500,000 individuals in the UK Biobank and 273,000 people in a Finnish dataset, finding that infections associated with brain atrophy are also linked to all-cause dementia risk.
. - The findings add to a growing body of evidence that infections are linked to a higher risk of dementia later in life, experts told The Washington Post.
The new study represents a "leap beyond previous studies that had already associated infection with susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease," Rudy Tanzi, PhD, director of the McCane Center for Brain Health at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital, told the Post.