United States: According to a new Neurology study, it is revealed that those who experience Inflammation on a consistent scale during their adulthood would have more chances of going through poor executive function in midlife.
More about the news
The “executive function” is a set of complicated cognitive skills which are linked to activities that help humans to be organized and could prioritize tasks on priotity basis.
It also means regulating emotions, being attentive, managing time, and avoiding distractions from external sources.
There are several factors, as per the experts, that might lead to executive dysfunction and further lead to various types of neurological conditions, which the studies have linked to Inflammation in older adults to dementia.
According to the first author of the Neurology study, Amber Bahorik of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences said, “We know from long-term studies that brain changes leading to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias may take decades to develop,” as forbes.com reported.
“We wanted to see if health and lifestyle habits in early adulthood may play a part in cognitive skills in midlife, which, in turn, may influence the likelihood of dementia in later life,” Bahorik added.
More about the recent finding
The analysis of data included 2,364 individuals who participated in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study, where Bahorik and colleagues found that a minimal ten percent of the involved individuals with low Inflammation did not pass cognitive tests.
These tests were to analyze their memory and processing speed.
On the other hand, almost nineteen percent of the individuals with higher inflammation had poor results in the test, whereas another 21 percent of those with moderate levels of inflammation also showed lagging performance compared to those with lower inflammation.
According to senior author Kristine Yaffe, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, neurology, and epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF, “Inflammation plays a significant role in cognitive aging and may begin in early adulthood. There is likely a direct and indirect effect of Inflammation on cognition,” as forbes.com reported.
Yaffe stated, “Fortunately, there are ways to reduce inflammation – such as by increasing physical activity and quitting smoking – that might be promising paths for prevention,” as he continued.
Problems related to chronic inflammation
Studies have shown that there is a link between chronic inflammation and not only dementia but also other conditions such as heart-related diseases, hypertension, diabetes Type-2, and depression.