A study from the National Institute on aging finds middle-aged men who were overweight and had high blood pressure and cholesterol were more likely to develop vascular dementia – the most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease – in old age. In the study, the researchers looked at data on 3,555 Japanese-American men who had been enrolled since the mid-1960’s in the Honolulu Heart Program. By the early 1990’s, 215 of these men showed signs of clinical dementia. The researchers used information gathered in the 1960’s to find men who had “syndrome X” – a combination of high blood glucose levels, high blood pressure, overweight and high cholesterol and triglycerides, Reuters reports. They found that the men who had syndrome X in their 50’s were more likely to experience vascular dementia in their 70’s.
SOURCE/REFERENCE: American Academy of Neurology’s 52nd annual meeting, May 2000
