Primary Research Article under analysis

Hello readers, welcome, its spring!

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This would my fourth blog but not final. May be I didn’t mention the inspiration behind talking about Alzheimer’s and bringing awareness to the people. Trying to make as much difference possible by educating younger generations that this disease needs to slow down or we need to speed up. Margaret Thatcher is my little burning fire to see a hopeful tomorrow.

Speaking of that, Through “PubMed” - a reputed site for articles, I just came across a latest study (Primary Research article) done this month, regarding lifestyle behavior pattern and risks of Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

As we all know that lifestyle behavior pattern is really important, as I mentioned in my previous post how it has positive effects. This study looks at six behavioral patterns;

Lifestyle behavior pattern is associated with different levels of risk for incident Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Abstract:

Basically, there has been couple of research done strictly how physical activity effects dementia, or how involvement in social, mental and productive activities associate lower incidence of dementia. Also, diet has been associated with less cognitive decline but “little work has been done to simultaneously examine a wide range of lifestyle behaviors for their collective influence.” Identifying lifestyle is very important as it could help lead us leading to certain populations that may have risks of getting dementia in the future. Which is why this research article is the next step to help with prevention.

“Although risk of dementia, particularly AD, depends strongly on biological and genetic factors, life span development theory argues that there is flexibility in development, suggesting that individuals may influence late-life cognitive outcomes through lifestyle choices.”

Objective:

To, “identify individual behavioral patterns of diet, exercise, social interaction, church attendance, alcohol consumption, and smoking and to examine their association with consequent dementia risk” as well as combined effect of these patterns.

Measurement:

They used certain measurements to obtain their baseline for every factor being influenced. To better understand, Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify patterns among these behaviors, this was a combination of lifestyle; grouped. LCA lead to four lifestyle classes. Unhealthy- religious (UH-R), Unhealthy-nonreligious (UH-NR), Healthy-moderately religious (H-MR) and Healthy-very religious (H-VR).

Method:

This study was conducted in Cache country, Utah where residents generally had high prevalence, attributes which contributed to healthy aging. Numbers of participants used were “two thousand and four hundred night-one participants (healthy) without dementia initially reported no problems in activities of daily living.”  It is a longitudinal, population-based study- which means studies where carried out for 5 consecutive years within a large group of people (community).

The participants were diagnosed for prior dementia as part of CCMS protocols. There was an in-person interview that included an examination (3MS) as well as physical evaluation, and neuropsychological tests.

All the six aspects were measured at respective baseline, in person or through a mailed questionnaire.

DIET

RELIGIOUS

SMOKING

DRINKING

EXERCISE

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

Analyses:
As I mentioned that these studies were done in the Latent Class Analysis (LCA). It identified subgroups, thus distinguishing the diversity in character of the population. The purpose of LCA "is to explain the correlation between the behavioural variables by identifying underlying subgroups, using maximum likelihood technique to generate estimates of the likelihood of an individual being in a class and the likelihood of response, given conditional likelihood.”

Overall RESULTS:


Sample Result:
They are proportion of the sample, spilt according to sex and lifestyle, as you can see the alcohol threshold in men is more then women.

These are the four distinct behaviour pattern. UH-R, UH-NR, H-MR, H-VR. 

Results:

These results showed that UH-NR, H-MR and H-VR, had significantly lower dementia risk than UH-R. So basically be healthy and little spiritual, you might be able to avoid AD in the near future.

Discussion:
Most of the participants reported going to church and since the church they go to had strict proscriptions against alcohol consumption and smoking this could have deflected the experiment group H-R with UH-R. People going to church had a better diet, exercise, and social interactions, and the other subsample was low on all three of these behaviours.
H-VR and H-MR were different only that the former were somewhat more likely to attend church and abstain from alcohol than the latter. Both had significantly lower risk of all cause dementia and AD 


Conclusion: It suggests that older adults who are functionally independent tend to be categorized with distinct patterns of lifestyle behaviors with different levels of risks for getting dementia and Alzheimer's disease.





Reference: 

Author               Norton,Maria C.; Dew,Jeffrey; Smith,Heeyoung; Fauth,Elizabeth;    Piercy,Kathleen W.; Breitner,John    C.S.;Tschanz,JoAnn; Wengreen,Heidi; Welsh-Bohmer, Kathleen; for the Cache County Investigators

Title

Lifestyle Behavior Pattern Is Associated with Different levels of Risk for Incident Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease: The Cache County Study

Source

J.Am.Geriatr.Soc., 2012, 60, 3, 405-412





Works Cited:

"Lifestyle Behavior Pattern is Associated with Different Levels of Risk for Incident Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease: The Cache County Study." (2012 march)Print.

Norton, Maria C., et al. "Lifestyle Behavior Pattern is Associated with Different Levels of Risk for Incident Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease: The Cache County Study." Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 60.3 (2012): 405-12. Web.