NHS figures stated that there are currently over 900,000 people in the UK who are living with dementia, and that number is rising. Even while persons over 65 are most linked with it, people as young as 30 can get it.
A recent study suggests that there may be a connection between illness and stress, a problem that we have all encountered.
The study revealed that those with long-term diagnoses of depression or chronic stress are four times more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the most common type of dementia.
Researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet looked at data from 44,447 patients, ages 18 to 65, and tracked them for eight years to see how many of them received a diagnosis of the crippling illness.
According to Axel C Carlsson, the study's last author and docent at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, "the risk is still very small and the causality is unknown, but that said, the finding is important in that it enables us to improve preventative efforts and understand links with the other risk factors for dementia.”
"It's very uncommon for people in this age group to develop dementia, so we need to identify all possible risk factors for the disease," Dr Carlsson added, as per the Daily Record.
