Reducing the Risk of Cognitive Decline and Dementia: WHO Recommendations.

With population ageing worldwide, dementia poses one of the greatest global challenges for health and social care in the 21st century. In 2019, around 55 million people were affected by dementia, with the majority living in low- and middle-income countries. Dementia leads to increased costs for governments, communities, families and individuals.

Sexual Activity and Depressive Symptoms in Later Life: Insights from Jamaica.

: To explore relationships between sexual activity and depressive symptoms in urology and gynecology out-patients aged 50 years and older.: Depressive symptoms were assessed using Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale. Sexual activity was measured by interviewer-administered questionnaires assessing relationships, intimacy and sexual function (N = 557).

Proportion of Dementia Explained by Five Key Factors in Jamaica.

Background: Dementia has no known cure and age is its strongest predictor. Given that populations in the Caribbean are aging, a focus on policies and programs that reduce the risk of dementia and its risk factors is required.

Objective: To estimate the proportion of dementia in the Jamaican setting attributable to key factors.

Regional Overview on the Double Burden of Malnutrition and Examples of Program and Policy Responses: Latin America and the Caribbean.

Background: Hunger, food insecurity, stunting, anemia, overweight, and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) may coexist in the same person, household, and community in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The double burden of malnutrition (DBM) is an important cause of disability and premature death, which could be addressed with comprehensive policies such as the Plan of Action for the Prevention of Obesity in Children and Adolescents. This paper summarizes the main policies and actions aimed to prevent undernutrition and obesity.

The proportion of dementia attributable to common modifiable lifestyle factors in Barbados.

Objective: To understand what number and proportion of dementia cases in Barbados are attributable to modifiable lifestyle factors and what effect a reduction in these risk factors would have on future dementia prevalence.

Methods: This was an observational study using Levin's Attributable Risk formula, which assumes independence of risk factors, to calculate the population attributable risk (PAR) of dementia (all-cause) for six risk factors: midlife obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, low educational attainment, diabetes mellitus, and midlife hypertension in Barbados. A recently-published, modified formula was utilized to account for non-independence of risk factors using secondary data for Barbados.

Proportion of dementia in Australia explained by common modifiable risk factors.

Background: At present, dementia has no known cure. Interventions to delay onset and reduce prevalence of the disease are therefore focused on risk factor reduction. Previous population attributable risk estimates for western countries may have been underestimated as a result of the relatively low rates of midlife obesity and the lower weighting given to that variable in statistical models.

Updating the Evidence on the Association between Serum Cholesterol and Risk of Late-Life Dementia: Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Cohort studies have reported that midlife high total serum cholesterol (TC) is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in late-life but findings have been based on few studies and previous reviews have been limited by a lack of compatible data.

Objective: We synthesized all high quality data from cohort studies reporting on the association between total serum cholesterol measured and late-life cognitive outcomes including Alzheimer's disease (AD), vascular dementia (VaD), any dementia, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and cognitive decline.

Methods: The literature was searched up to October 2016 using a registered protocol.

Life expectancy with and without cognitive impairment in seven Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Background: The rising prevalence of cognitive impairment is an increasing challenge with the ageing of our populations but little is known about the burden in low- and middle- income Latin American and Caribbean countries (LAC) that are aging more rapidly than their developed counterparts. We examined life expectancies with cognitive impairment (CILE) and free of cognitive impairment (CIFLE) in seven developing LAC countries.

Methods: Data from The Survey on Health, Well-being and Ageing in LAC (N = 10,597) was utilised and cognitive status was assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).

Role of dietary pattern analysis in determining cognitive status in elderly Australian adults.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to determine the association between dietary patterns and cognitive function and to examine how classification systems based on food groups and food items affect levels of association between diet and cognitive function. The present study focuses on the older segment of the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab) sample (age 60+) that completed the food frequency questionnaire at Wave 1 (1999/2000) and the mini-mental state examination and tests of memory, verbal ability and processing speed at Wave 3 (2012). Three methods were used in order to classify these foods before applying PCA.