‘Generally accepted’ signs of ageing may actually be dementia – study
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Dementia research continues to uncover ways that could pick up the condition promptly and buy precious time to intervene. A new study, published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle, adds to this effort by identifying warning signs that could be mistaken for ageing.
It’s “generally accepted” that losing muscle strength and slowing down is a normal part of ageing.
However, a weaker grip, the difficulty to perform simple tasks such as getting up, walking and sitting down could be pointing to something more “sinister”.
New Edith Cowan University (ECU) research suggests that these problems could be a sign of dementia.
To investigate the relationship between muscle function and the mind-robbing condition, the research team looked at more than 1,000 women with an average age of 75 from the Perth Longitudinal Study of Ageing in Women.
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The researchers measured the women’s grip strength and the time it took for them to rise from a chair, walk three metres, turn around and sit back down – known as a timed-up-and-go (TUG) test.
These tests were also repeated after five years to monitor any loss of performance.
Over the next 15 years, almost 17 percent of the participants were found to have had a dementia event, categorised as a dementia-related hospitalisation or death.
The findings revealed that lower grip strength and slower TUG were significant risk factors for dementia.
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The women with the weakest grip strength were more than twice as likely to have a late-life dementia event.
Furthermore, those who were the slowest in the TUG test were more than twice as likely to experience the brain condition.
When researchers looked at the changes in grip strength and TUG test results after five years, a drop in performance was also linked with greater dementia risk.
In fact, women with the biggest decrease in TUG performance were found to be over four times more likely to have a dementia-related death.
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Senior researcher Dr Marc Sim explained that grip strength, which can be easily measured using a handheld device known as a dynamometer, may be a marker of brain health due to the overlapping nature of cognitive and motor decline.
The researcher added: “Possibly due to a range of underlying similarities, grip strength may also present as a surrogate measure of cardiovascular disease, inflammation and frailty, which are known risk factors for dementia.”
The researchers hope the findings from the study could help health professionals identify dementia risk in patients earlier.
Dr Sim said: “Both grip strength and TUG tests aren’t commonly performed in clinical practice, but both are inexpensive and simple screening tools.
“Incorporating muscle function tests as part of dementia screening could be useful to identify high-risk individuals, who might then benefit from primary prevention programs aimed at preventing the onset of the condition such as a healthy diet and a physically active lifestyle.
“The exciting findings were that decline in these measures was associated with substantially higher risk, suggesting that if we can halt this decline, we may be able to prevent late-life dementias.
“However, further research is needed in this area.”
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