Promoting cognitive health by exploring intergenerational differences in cognitive trajectories among Swedish older adults

Strong evidence has shown declining trends in dementia incidence in North America and Europe, including Sweden.

However, it is unknown whether this translates into a concurrent variation in the trends of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Thus, we will carry out two studies with the following aims: 1) To describe inter-generational trends of MCI and dementia.

Specifically, we want to explore if we are observing a delayed dementia onset at the expenses of an expansion of the years lived in mild disease stages (MCI expansion), or if MCI onset is delayed as well (MCI compression); 2) To characterize and quantify the factors that might explain observed changes in dementia and MCI trends in different generations.

We will focus on lifestyle behaviors, socioeconomic conditions, and cardiovascular burden and investigate whether a change has occurred in younger generations respect to older ones that may explain the change in MCI and dementia incidence. A gender perspective will be kept in designing both studies.

We plan to use data from two well-characterized Swedish population-based studies with psychosocial and health assessments of more than 4000 individuals aged 60+ with year of birth spanning between 1898 and 1960.

The project will be supported by the National E-Infrastructure on Aging Research (NEAR), which will provide data of the two projects and support future validation of the findings at the national level.

The ultimate goal of our proposal is to promote cognitive health among older adults by identifying those factors that can postpone not only the onset of severe disorders such as dementia, but also MCI.

We expect that our findings will be relevant to timely tailor and prioritize preventive and therapeutic actions to reduce the number of years spent by older adults with declining cognition.

Improving our understanding of how and when it is necessary to intervene will decrease the current societal and individual burden caused by cognitive disorders.