New study finds people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more than three times as likely to experience early onset dementia. The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity journal and conducted by researchers at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, used UK BioBank data of more than 440,000 participants aged between 37 and 73.
The study collected data of these individuals’ household income, highest education qualification, and employment status, to determine their socioeconomic status. The data also looked at the extent of a participant’s healthy lifestyle, assessed through a score that looked at smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and diet.
The results found that individuals of a lower socioeconomic status had a three-times-higher risk of developing early onset dementia in comparison to their counterparts from a higher socioeconomic background. Of these results, less than 12 per cent of cases could be explained by lifestyle factors, suggesting that individuals from a lower socioeconomic background living a healthier lifestyle wouldn’t necessarily mitigate the risk of developing early onset dementia.
The research also found that people from a lower socioeconomic background who lived an unhealthy lifestyle had a 440 per cent higher risk of developing early onset dementia compared with those from a higher socioeconomic background who lived a healthy lifestyle.