Everyone knows that getting older can sometimes mean our bodies and minds don’t work as well as they used to.
One of the things people fear the most is having trouble seeing or having trouble remembering things. Now, new research suggests that these two problems might be related.
Researchers from the Kellogg Eye Center at Michigan Medicine, the medical school at the University of Michigan, recently published their findings in a journal called JAMA Ophthalmology.
They looked at about 3,000 older adults. These folks all took part in tests for their vision and thinking abilities in their own homes.
The Link between Vision Problems and Dementia
The people in the study were all aged 71 or over, with most of them being 77. A team member went to their homes and used a digital tablet to test their vision.
They tested how well they could see things close up and far away. They also looked at how well they could see letters that didn’t stand out very much from the background.
Next, they tested the older adults’ memory and thinking skills. They also asked about any health issues, like Alzheimer’s disease, which is a type of dementia that affects memory and thinking.
The study found that about 12 out of every 100 people had dementia. But when they looked at people who had trouble seeing things up close, almost 22 out of 100 had dementia.
The study also found that people with bigger vision problems, like not being able to see things far away or not being able to see letters that didn’t stand out from the background, were more likely to have dementia.
Even folks with just a little trouble seeing things far away had a higher chance of having dementia.
After considering other health problems and personal traits, the study found that these people were 72% more likely to have dementia than those with no vision problems.
People with more than one type of vision problem were also 35% more likely to have dementia than those with normal vision.
The Impact of These Findings
Previous studies had found similar things, but they usually just asked people how good their vision was instead of testing it. They also didn’t always represent the whole United States population like this new study did.
This study builds on earlier work that showed that adults who had cataract surgery to fix their distance vision were less likely to have dementia later on.
The authors of the study, eye doctors Olivia Killeen and Joshua Ehrlich, wrote that taking care of our vision might be an important way to keep both our sight and our overall health in good shape.
They think that future studies should look at whether improving vision can help slow down memory and thinking problems and reduce the risk of dementia.
Meanwhile, Sheila West from the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Medicine wrote in an editorial that the study provides more proof of a link between vision problems and thinking problems.
She believes that making sure everyone has access to eye care services is an important goal, especially for those who are experiencing thinking problems.
This study used data from a big study called the National Health and Aging Trends Study. This study is based at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Joshua Ehrlich and his team published a paper last year that estimated how many Americans with dementia might have their vision loss to blame.
They estimated that about 1.8% of all cases, or more than 100,000 out of 6 million Americans with dementia, are linked to vision loss.
They suggested that vision problems should be considered alongside other known risk factors for dementia that can be changed.
Olivia Killeen recently finished a program at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and is now at Duke University.
Joshua Ehrlich is a professor at Michigan Medicine and a researcher at ISR, where he works on NHATS, and also a member of IHPI.
If you care about eye health, please read studies about how to save your eyes from diabetes, and the treatments of dry eye you need to know.
For more information about eye disease, please see recent studies about how to protect your eyes from glaucoma, and results showing this eye surgery may reduce dementia risk.
The study was published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
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