Smoking Not Linked To Dementia Risk—Study

Smoking is injurious to health and this is a well-known fact. It is known to be a cause of several diseases and might even lead to premature death. A recent study was conducted to check the relation between dementia and smoking. For this study, smoking habits for senior citizen was taken into consideration. The data for 10 years were considered. As per the research, there is no direct link between dementia and smoking habits.

Dementia refers to the disease in which the patients can have low memory power, lessened ability of thinking, reasoning and interacting with people. The symptoms gradually become so drastic that people start encountering issues in living a normal life and taking care of themselves. This research paper is contradicting the previous observations which stated that dementia increases with excessive smoking. The reason behind such high contradiction is the way in which the present data was analyzed.

The research was carried out at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. The researchers used the statistical method, ‘Competing Risk Analysis’ for the study. This method gives more stress on the effect of smoking on death. The research paper has been published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. The study was led by Erin L. Abner. He is a Ph.D. and an assistant professor at the Sanders Brown Center of the University. According to Dr. Abner, while the earlier studies had solid data to justify the relationship between dementia and smoking, these did not take into account the mortality risk.

As per World Health Organization, there were 50 million dementia patients around the world in 2015. The experts at the organization have an estimate that the number might reach 152 million by the end of 2050.While dementia is generally a disease for aged, doctors think there is no link between age and this disease.