Cognitive Decline Sets in Earlier Than First Thought

In the past, researchers thought that the first signs of cognitive decline set in at around the age of 60. However, a new study conducted by European researchers is fighting that established belief, showing that this array of conditions can make its presence felt as early as a person's mid-40s.

Knowing the age when they should start looking for signs of cognitive decline in their patients is very important for physicians, since they need to develop pharmacological and behavioral interventions aimed at reducing the influence these disorders have on people.

What this research implies is that doctors currently have a lag of about 15 years in their quest to find signs of cognitive decline early on. The new study appears to be pretty solid, since the data researchers used to compile it were collected from 5,198 men and 2,192 women (aged 45 to 70), over a 10-year period.

“As life expectancy continues to increase, understanding the correlation between cognitive decline and age is one of the challenges of the 21st Century,” explains Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health expert Archana Singh-Manoux, PhD, quoted by PsychCentral.