Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently discovered that addressing common vision issues could help prevent 1 in 5 dementia cases.
Dementia is on the rise in the United States so a top priority for doctors is finding risk factors that can be addressed and hopefully mitigated. While the study results don't prove the link between vision issues and dementia, it does show that the two issues are related and that there could be risk factors that are found in both conditions.
Researchers did a post-mortem evaluation of 86 human donors who had been diagnosed with cognitive issues and they found that retinal changes corresponded with the areas of the brain that take care of memory and time perception. Researchers also found that different forms of dementia seemed to be linked with separate eye conditions. Age-related macular degeneration was more likely to found in those with Alzheimer's while glaucoma was more likely to appear in those with vascular dementia.
Researchers hypothesize that sensory loss can lead to depression, which in turn can lead to social isolation and lower physical activity, which could, in turn, cause cognitive decline. The study results noted that dementia was up to nine times greater when contrast sensitivity was affected and eye conditions related to loss of contrast sensitivity include cataracts and macular degeneration.
Additional studies will be needed to further evaluate the link between eye health and dementia related conditions.
