Thinner retinas are early sign of cognitive decline

Thinner retinas in the human eye are a clear sign a person is at significant and increased risk of future mental decline, a UCL-led study has concluded. Researchers say this breakthrough study, suggests regular eye tests could help identify those likely to get dementia at a much earlier stage, which means suitable treatments could be prescribed at a more effective time to slow or stop the onset of dementia at early stages of the disease. In the largest longitudinal study of its kind, researchers at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital, assessed UK Biobank data, from 32,000 anonymised individuals, aged between 40 and 69. The selected participants had undergone optical coherence tomography (OCT), which precisely measures retinal anatomy, in particular, the retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL), at baseline - between the years 2006-2010. At the same time, participants had also undergone a series of basic cognitive tests which assessed memory, reaction time and reasoning. The OCT and cognitive tests were then repeated in a subset of participants approximately three years after baseline in 2013. In assessing the data, researchers found a significant association between RNFL thickness and cognitive function at baseline.