Mid-life anxiety may be linked to later life dementia

People with moderate to severe mid-life anxiety may face a greater risk of dementia in later life, suggests an analysis of the available published evidence led by UCL and University of Southampton researchers and published in BMJ Open . But as yet, it's not clear whether treatment for anxiety could curb dementia risk, say the researchers. "We need more research to find out what impact anxiety treatment might have on dementia risk - whether that's through pharmacological intervention, or talking therapies or treatments based on mindfulness or meditation, which are known to help reduce anxiety," said the study's lead author, Dr Natalie Marchant (UCL Psychiatry). A mounting body of evidence suggests that mental illness may be associated with dementia in older age, but it's not clear if it represents initial (prodromal) symptoms before fully fledged disease or acts as an independent risk factor. To probe this further, the researchers trawled research databases for studies looking at the association between mid-life anxiety in isolation or combined with depression and the development of dementia, with a gap of at least 10 years in between diagnoses. Only four out of more than 3500 studies met these criteria, but they involved a total of nearly 30,000 people. All of the studies accounted for a range of potentially influential demographic, physical and psychological factors, and all found an association between moderate to severe anxiety and future dementia, over an interval of at least 10 years.