A new study has found a link between a common health problem called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and a higher risk of dementia. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD, happens when fat cells build up in the liver.
This is a problem that can affect as many as one in four people around the world, making it the most common chronic liver disease.
But what makes NAFLD especially tricky is that it often doesn’t have any symptoms. Some people may feel tired or have discomfort in the top right part of their belly, but many people don’t feel anything at all.
It’s not caused by drinking too much alcohol. Rather, it can be related to being overweight or having conditions like high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes.
In a small number of people, it can cause liver inflammation or damage.
The Connection to Dementia
Dementia is a brain condition that affects memory and thinking. Certain health issues like high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity are known to increase the risk of dementia.
These are the same conditions that are often seen in people with NAFLD. Therefore, researchers wanted to know if there might be a link between NAFLD and dementia.
To explore this, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, examined the health records of nearly 3,000 people aged 65 and older who had NAFLD.
They compared these people with over 28,000 people of the same age who didn’t have NAFLD.
What the Study Found
Over a period of more than five years, the researchers found that people with NAFLD were more likely to be diagnosed with dementia.
After adjusting for factors like high blood pressure and diabetes, they found that people with NAFLD had a 38% higher rate of dementia overall.
In particular, they had a 44% higher rate of a type of dementia called vascular dementia, which is caused by poor blood flow to the brain.
People with NAFLD who also had heart disease had a 50% greater risk of dementia. And those with NAFLD who had had a stroke had a more than two-and-a-half times greater risk of dementia.
The Implications of the Study
This study adds to our understanding of dementia and how to prevent it. The results show a link between NAFLD and a higher risk of dementia.
This suggests that treating NAFLD, and related heart conditions, might help to reduce the risk of dementia.
However, one limitation of the study is that many cases of NAFLD go undiagnosed, as people often do not have symptoms.
This could mean that the real link between NAFLD and dementia might be even stronger than what the study found. Further research is needed to fully understand the connection between these two conditions.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about walking patterns may help identify specific types of dementia, and common high blood pressure drugs may help lower your dementia risk.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about this tooth disease linked to dementia, and results showing this MIND diet may protect your cognitive function, prevent dementia.
The study was published in Neurology.
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