Getting divorced, losing a parent or being fired can age the brain by four years, a study suggests.
One stressful event — even including falling out with the in-laws — could increase the risk of dementia, according to data suggesting that life’s serious misfortunes could have knock-on effects decades later.
Efforts to cushion the blow of bereavement, abuse or other traumatic events could help to protect the brain, experts speculated.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin looked at 1,320 adults with an average age of 58 to study how stressful life events, ranging from serious illness to imprisonment, affected the brain.
Those who had more such problems scored worse on cognitive tests, scientists told the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London yesterday.
Advertisement
Megan Zuelsdorrff, who led the research, said the effect was particularly pronounced in the black people she studied, who tended to have suffered more, calculating that, for them, “adverse events across the lifespan predict cognitive function more strongly than established risk factors including age, education and the APOE-e4 Alzheimer’s risk gene”.
Maria Carrillo, chief scientific officer at the Alzheimer’s Association, said that “each stressful situation amounts to about four years of cognitive ageing”, pointing out these could happen at any time in life. “Things like death of a parent, abuse, loss of a job, loss of a home, so it’s a variety of different things that you imagine would be stressful. A change of school for some children could even be quite stressful,” she said. “Brain health should be thought of as a life course issue, not just in later or mid-life. We have to start thinking about brain health at birth, if not before.”
Exactly how stress damages the brain is not clear, but the tissue inflammation it is known to cause is thought to be the most likely explanation. Chronic inflammation can cause damage over time, while also perhaps making the brain more vulnerable to later illness. Depression brought on by serious life problems could also contribute, as it is known to be linked to dementia.
Carol Routledge, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Our brains are incredibly intricate organs that show enormous resilience to keep us ticking every day. Stressful life events can turn our lives upside down for a time and though most people can eventually return to an even keel, we can’t be sure how psychological stress could impact the workings of the brain over time . . . There is a growing realisation that events and experiences throughout life can impact the brain decades later and researchers must take a whole life-span approach to understanding brain health in later life.”
Doug Brown, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “We know that prolonged stress can have an impact on our health, so it’s no surprise that this study indicates stressful life events may also affect our memory and thinking abilities later in life. However, it remains to be established whether these stressful life events can lead to an increased risk of dementia.”
Advertisement
• Brain scans could improve dementia diagnosis for two thirds of patients. At present doctors use special memory and skills-based tests to reach a diagnosis, but these are often unreliable. Findings presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London showed that positron emission tomography (PET) scans allowed doctors to look directly for the build-up of the amyloid protein that is linked to the disease and to identify patients who were most likely to develop the illness. The scans are rarely carried out on the NHS because they are expensive.