Maintaining normal blood pressure, avoiding diabetes and not smoking between the ages of 45 and 65 could help keep dementia away for an extra 13 years, a study has found.
Women also lived longer without dementia than men, while white participants were dementia-free for longer than black participants, regardless of how many risk factors they had, it showed.
The researchers, from NYU Langone Health, said it showed the impact of such known risk factors, which can speed up the onset of dementia as well as cardiovascular issues.
“People need to actively avert these factors in midlife as a strategy for preserving brain health for more than a decade,” said study senior investigator Josef Coresh.
He said that discovering new ways to delay dementia was crucial, pointing out that 42 per cent of Americans develop the condition at some time after the age of 55.
For the paper, published in Neurology Open Access, the researchers analysed data in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, which started in 1986 in four US cities and followed participants over decades into late life, measuring midlife vascular risk factors and dementia.
It assessed 12,409 people with an average age of 56 for high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking.
Among the group, 3,008 developed dementia and 5,238 died without dementia.
Those with the risk factors lived an average of 17 years without dementia, while those who had no risk factors lived nearly 30 years without it.
Women with all three risk factors lived an average of 18.1 years from the start of tracking without developing dementia, compared to 16.6 years for male study participants. White participants with all three risk factors lived an average of 19.6 years without developing dementia, compared to 16 years for black participants.
“These results suggest that vascular risk reduction may benefit all groups, but that certain populations, such as black adults, may especially benefit from targeted prevention efforts,” Dr Coresh said. “Hopefully, these results will encourage people to stop smoking and watch their vascular health closely from age 45 on.”
