Contents of your blood can affect risk of dementia

ATLANTA — By 2050, the global population of adults 60 and older will approximately double, leading to upward of 153 million dementia cases. That’s why University College Cork neuroscience professor Yvonne Nolan and Ph.D. student Sebastian Dohm-Hansen Allard are investigating the relationship between dementia risks and what’s in your blood.

Human brains do not change at a constant rate. During certain times in our lives — childhood, adolescence and very old age — they change much more quickly. Now, according to Nolan and Allard, your brain might also start changing at a much faster pace because of what is in your blood. But it might be a good thing for science.

It is important for scientists to detect risk factors for cognitive decline before a patient reaches old age, when it is often too late to intervene. Scanning a patient for risk factors when they are in their 40s to 50s can give medical practitioners time to act.

“So, how do we detect changes without having to give everyone an expensive brain scan? As it turns out, the contents of blood may cause the brain to age,” Nolan and Allard reported to the Conversation.

“With time, our cells and organs slowly deteriorate, and the immune system can react to this by starting the process of inflammation,” they said. “Inflammatory molecules can then end up in the bloodstream, make their way to the brain, interfere with its normal functioning and possibly impair cognition.”

Scientists at Johns Hopkins and the University of Mississippi put this concept to the test in a 2019 study in which researchers analyzed the presence of inflammatory molecules in the blood of middle-aged adults with enough precision to be able to predict cognitive changes 20 years down the line.