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According to the WHO, Alzheimer’s disease accounts for between 60% and 70% of dementia cases in the world.
According to Statista, It is expected that by the year 2050 the number of people with dementia will increase to 139 million in the world.
Most caregivers of people with dementia are family members.
People who suffer from chronic pain in multiple body locations have a higher risk of dementia and faster cognitive decline, according to a new study.
A research team led by Dr. TU Yiheng from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that people with chronic pain in multiple parts of the body were at increased risk of dementia and experienced more extensive and rapid cognitive decline, including memory, executive function, learning, and attention.
Chronic multisite pain, in which pain is experienced in multiple anatomic locations, affects nearly half of chronic pain patients and has been found to place a greater burden on patients’ overall health. However, it has not been clear whether people with chronic multisite pain suffered from aggravated neurocognitive abnormalities.
In this study, after analyzing the records of 354,943 people in the UK Biobank cohort, the researchers found that the risk of neurocognitive abnormality increased with each additional pain site and was mediated by atrophy in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that patients with chronic pain in CPM are at higher risk of dementia than people without pain and those with single-site chronic pain (SCP).
According to the researchers, the risk of neurocognitive abnormalities increases with each additional pain site and is mediated by atrophy of the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory, whose volume decreases with age.
The study authors equate the effects of multisite chronic pain to the effect of aging in healthy people with a mean age of 60 years.
“Chronic multi-sited pain can cause up to eight years of accelerated aging in the hippocampus, an effect that may underlie a range of cognitive loads,” says Yiheng Tu, lead author of the study.
What is dementia?
According to the WHO, dementia is a syndrome characterized by deterioration of cognitive function beyond what could be considered a consequence of normal aging. Dementia affects memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning ability, language, and judgment. Consciousness is not affected.
Impairment in cognitive function is often accompanied, and sometimes preceded, by impairment in emotional control, social behavior, or motivation. Dementia is caused by various diseases and injuries that affect the brain primarily or secondarily, such as Alzheimer’s disease or stroke.
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