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, and scientists may have just found another one: severe infections, especially of the urinary tract and bladder. and other bacterial diseases were strongly associated with a higher risk of developing dementia years later, independently of other coexisting conditions.
to dementia risk before, it hasn't been clear if other non-infectious diseases were playing a role and skewing the statistics.and heart disease, that can raise the risk of both infections and dementia – so it's notable that researchers have been able to single out infectious diseases here. "During the past few years, considerable research interest has focused on the potential role of infectious diseases in the development of dementia,""Pre-existing comorbid conditions are potentially important contributors to this association, because the average age of dementia diagnosis is older than 80 years, and therefore people with dementia often have other illnesses, many of which also confer an increased risk for infections."between 2017 and 2020. The study also included 312,772 control participants without dementia, matched by age and sex.PLOS Med.A total of 29 hospital-treated diseases were connected to dementia risk, the data showed. These included mental, behavioral, carbometabolic, andAfter adjusting the data to account for the other 27 diseases, and for potential influences such as education and employment status, the severe infections – particularly UTIs – were linked to a 19 percent greater risk ofThe main takeaway is that preventing these infections might be a way to reduce the chances of dementia later in life – alongside all theThe researchers make some suggestions about why the link might exist. For one, the inflammation triggered by an infection – the body's attempts to heal itself – can put the immune system into a state of overdrive that then damages the brain. However, further research will be needed to clarify this. There were also clues in the data suggesting that when the infection happens might be significant. Generally, the time between infections and a dementia diagnosis was five to six years on average. It's possible that these infections are accelerating early dementia processes or pushing them past a tipping point. "This time frame suggests that the inflammatory insult resulting from infections severe enough to require hospital treatment may accelerate the pre-existing preclinical stage of dementia rather than initiate neurodegeneration in a cognitively healthy person,"Among the non-infectious diseases associated with a higher likelihood of developing dementia, the researchers identified alcohol-related mental disorders, , and brain disease. This all helps to improve the understanding scientists have of how dementia works and how it gets started.
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