Positive attitude towards ageing reduces dementia risk: Study

New Delhi: Age is just a number. Well, now the claim has been substantiated by a team of scientists, who found that positive attitude towards ageing can reduce the risks of dementia in older adults.

According to the Yale University study, older persons with positive age beliefs are 50 percent less likely to develop dementia than their peers who held negative age beliefs.

The study examined whether culture-based age beliefs influence the risk of developing dementia among older people, including those who carry the high-risk gene variant.

The researchers studied a group of 4,765 people and found that positive age beliefs can reduce the risk of one of the most established genetic risk factors for dementia.

The study demonstrated that APOE e4, a high-risk gene variant, carried with positive beliefs about ageing had a 2.7 percent risk of developing dementia, compared to a 6.1 percent risk for those with negative beliefs about ageing, over the four-year study duration.

Dementia primarily afflicts older people and is marked by memory loss and an inability to perform tasks.

The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.