Dementia Symptoms & Stages: Study Links Low Grades To Higher Risk Of Dementia Diagnosis

A recent study from Sweden showed that late-life dementia can be linked to low grades and performances in school at a young age as early as 10, MedPage Today has learned.

Sekhiy Dekhtyar, PhD, and his colleagues from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found a link between low grades, class ranking and even employment and job descriptions to dementia or Alzheimer's Disease, which are illnesses associated with impairments in thinking, memory loss as well as lapses in communication, focus and reasoning. Dementia comes at age 65 and over, among men and women.

The study suggests that the children who received a higher quality of cognitive stimulation at younger ages through education and during middle years through acquiring competent jobs have greater access to reversing the effects of Alzheimer's Disease when they age.

Job types and educational backgrounds were gathered from census, followed with records of whether or not the subjects have had dementia at age 65 or later.

The research, as reported by MedPage Today, shows a number of data gathered from Uppsala Birth Cohort Study. "It seems education and occupational complexity could not compensate for the effect of low baseline abilities -- risk was similar in subjects with low grades irrespective of occupation or education," Dekhtyar said.

This boils down into concluding that mental activity tested by challenges imposed in education and complex dealings in employment can reduce risks of late-life dementia. 

Healthline says that signs of dementia include subtle short-term memory changes, difficulty in speaking and doing normal tasks, mood swings, listlessness or apathy, confusion, failing sense of direction, being repetitive, struggling to adapt to changes and difficulty in following stories.

"The reduction of dementia risk is a positive phenomenon, but it is important to remember that the number of people with dementia will continue to rise along with the increase in life expectancy and absolute numbers of people over age 75," says Professor Laura Fratiglioni tells KI News. "This means that the societal burden of dementia and the need for medical and social services will continue to increase. Today there's no way to cure patients who have dementia. Instead we must continue to improve health care and prevention in this area," adds the Director of the Aging Research Center in the same report.

Aside from drugs prescribed and therapies done to provide healing to patients with dementia, medical practitioners and psychologists now know ways on how to practically lower the risk of the said disease by recommending parents to subject their kids to higher quality of education and encourage support to future professional endeavors.