Preventing dementia

7 ways to reduce the risk of alzheimer's. World leading cognitive research specialists, Cambridge Cognition, offer advice on the simple steps you can take

However, those with Ph.D.'s begin old age at a higher cognitive level, so are more likely to die of something other than Alzheimer's, the study's lead author says.

Objective To summarise evidence on the preventive effects of continuing education on mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s-type dementia in adults 45 years or older.

Design Systematic review and overview of systematic reviews.

Data sources We systematically searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and Scopus for published studies and grey literature databases for unpublished studies from January 1990 to April 2018.

Methods To assess evidence directly addressing our objectives, we conducted a systematic review. Because we were aware of a dearth of direct evidence, we also performed an overview of systematic reviews on leisure activities that mimic formal continuing education. We a priori established the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Two authors independently assessed inclusion and exclusion at the abstract and full-text level, rated the risk of bias, and determined the certainty of evidence using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation. We resolved all discrepancies by consensus. We synthesised the available evidence narratively.

Results Our searches identified 4933 citations. For the systematic review, only two publications on the same prospective cohort study (Tasmanian Healthy Brain Project) met the inclusion criteria; for the overview of reviews, we included five systematic reviews. Based on 459 participants, preliminary data of the ongoing cohort study indicated that cognitive reserve statistically significantly increased in persons attending university classes compared with the control group (92.5% vs 55.7%, p