Mental Function in Middle
Age Linked to Death Risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Declining mental ability in middle age may predict a person's risk of death, a preliminary study suggests.

While there is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that declining mental ability among the elderly can be used to determine mortality risk, few studies have investigated the relationship in middle-aged people, according to Dr. Valory N. Pavlik of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

To investigate, Pavlik's team evaluated the mental abilities of 11,444 men and women 48 to 67 years old. All were free of heart disease, had not had a heart attack or stroke and were not taking drugs known to have an effect on the central nervous system. The group underwent three different tests of their mental abilities.

After about six years of follow-up, 482 of the study participants had died.

One test involving word recall and another that called for the pairing of numbers and symbols based on a special code were both tied to life expectancy. The lower a person's score on these tests, the greater their chance of dying during the study, according to the report in the Feb. 15 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The relationship remained even after the researchers controlled for various other factors that could have affected the results, such as socioeconomic level.

The findings indicate that worse mental function is a risk factor for death from any cause, at least when it comes to relatively young people who are healthy enough to participate in a study of this type.

Nonetheless, the researchers note that "the possibility remains that unmeasured factors such as dietary patterns, health care use or unknown underlying disease" could be behind the relationship.

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology 2003;157:327-334.

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