Scientists from the University of Mississippi found that 7 healthy habits and lifestyle factors may play a role in lowering the risk of dementia in people with the highest genetic risk.
The seven cardiovascular and brain health factors, known as the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7, are: being active, eating better, losing weight, not smoking, maintaining healthy blood pressure, controlling cholesterol, and reducing blood sugar.
The research is published in Neurology and was conducted by Adrienne Tin et al.
These healthy habits in Life’s Simple 7 have been linked to a lower risk of dementia overall, but it is uncertain whether the same applies to people with a high genetic risk.
In the study, the team tested 8,823 people with European ancestry and 2,738 people with African ancestry who were followed for 30 years. People had an average age of 54 at the beginning of the study.
Researchers calculated genetic risk scores at the start of the study.
Participants with European ancestry were divided into five groups and those with African ancestry were divided into three groups based on genetic risk scores.
The group with the highest genetic risk included people who had at least one copy of the APOE gene variant associated with Alzheimer’s disease, APOE e4.
Of those with European ancestry, 27.9% had the APOE e4 variant, while of those who had African ancestry, 40.4% had the APOE e4 variant.
The group with the lowest risk had the APOE e2 variant, which has been associated with a decreased risk of dementia.
By the end of the study, 1,603 people with European ancestry had developed dementia and 631 people with African ancestry had developed dementia.
For people with European ancestry, the team found that people with the highest scores in the lifestyle factors had a lower risk of dementia across all five genetic risk groups, including the group with the highest genetic risk of dementia.
For each one-point increase in the lifestyle factor score, there was a 9% lower risk of developing dementia.
Among people with African ancestry, researchers found a similar pattern of declining dementia risk across all three groups among those with higher scores on the lifestyle factors.
The team says larger sample sizes from diverse populations are needed to get more reliable estimates of the effects of these modifiable health factors on dementia risk within different genetic risk groups and ancestral backgrounds.
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