The death of a spouse often means the loss of intimacy, companionship and everyday support for older adults. A new study finds that widowhood can have another profound effect: It may accelerate cognitive decline. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed older, cognitively normal Americans enrolled in the Harvard Aging Brain Study whose marital status and brain β-amyloid levels—a marker of Alzheimer’s disease—were determined at the beginning of the study. The team found that individuals who were widowed experienced a sharper cognitive decline than their married counterparts, especially among those who had high β-amyloid levels. The study suggests that widowhood may be an important and understudied risk factor for cognitive decline associated with…
