Daily Intellectual Activity May Prevent, Delay Dementia

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests active participation in intellectual pursuits, such as reading and playing board games or card games, may delay or prevent dementia in older adults, reports MedScape . The researchers studied 15,582 community-living individuals who presented to the Elderly Health Centers of the Department of Health in Hong Kong from Jan. 1, 2005 to June 30, 2005. Subjects were free of dementia, and scored higher than the education-specific cutoff on the Cantonese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination at baseline. The participants were followed for up to six years with incident clinical dementia being the outcome. Those who developed incident dementia tended to be older than those who did not develop dementia. Subjects who developed dementia were mainly female and with lower educational attainment, and the prevalence of physical and psychiatric comorbidities was higher in this subgroup. They also engaged in healthy lifestyle practices to a lesser degree than those who did not develop dementia. Although nearly all participants reported engaging in some type of daily leisure activities, the dementia-free ones engaged in more varieties of leisure activities at baseline than those who developed dementia, while a larger proportion engaged in intellectual activities. A greater proportion of those who stayed dementia free reported participation in intellectual activities three years after baseline in comparison with those who developed dementia during years four to six. The proportion of subjects who participated in daily intellectual activities but not recreational or social activities at baseline was substantially larger in the cognitively stable cohort.