A new study shows that loss of visual sensitivity can predict dementia 12 years before it is diagnosed. For the test, people had to press a button as soon as they saw a triangle forming in a field of moving dots. People who would develop dementia were much slower to see this triangle on the screen.
A surprising factor can predict dementia up to 12 years in advance, study finds
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I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55637-x
Cataract surgery reduces dementia by 30%:
[Could cataract surgery protect against dementia? – Harvard Health](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/could-cataract-surgery-protect-against-dementia-202202232693)
Interesting, but I read a fair amount of caveats.
>While, the VSTs demonstrated ***low sensitivity and specificity*** in identifying those people who later at follow-up received a diagnosis of dementia in this cohort, the study also found that the HVLT and SF-EMSE were not highly sensitive or specific to identify future dementia risk.
>It is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. One such limitation concerns ***healthy volunteer bias and attrition*** which affect almost all such studies. It is possible that individuals with (cognitive) disabilities may not have been willing or able to participate in the study, which may have resulted in a sample that is not representative of the general population.