A long-term study of 1,449 people in Finland found that those who had better scores on standard metrics of cardiovascular health in midlife, especially for behavioral factors such as smoking, had a lower risk of dementia later in life. Yajun Liang of Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine.
Previous research suggests that efforts to address modifiable risk factors, such as behaviors that impact heart health, could reduce the global number of people with dementia by up to one third. However, there is a lack of evidence on…
