November 3, 2014

expert reaction to height and dementia risk

Researchers publishing in the The British Journal of Psychiatry have reported a link between a person’s height and their likelihood of developing dementia, especially in males.

Dr Doug Brown, Director of Research and Development, Alzheimer’s Society, said:

“The data suggests that very short people are at increased risk of dying with dementia. While the study was robust and detailed, because a very small number of people actually had dementia when they died it is very difficult to conclude that height is one of the most important risk factors for dementia.

“Future work in this area needs to understand exactly which factors that contribute to our height are important – whether that be childhood nutrition or genetic inheritance – and use that information to help us understand more about how dementia develops.

“Once fully grown there is nothing we can do to change our height, however we do know that we may be able to reduce our risk of dementia by making changes to our lifestyle. Not smoking, taking regular exercise and eating a healthy diet are all things that could improve our brain health.”

Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:

“Separating cause from effect is a big challenge of observational studies. However, the findings of this well controlled research encourage us to focus on early life, which influences adult height, as a small contributing factor to later dementia risk, particularly in men. Evidence is mounting for the potential to prevent dementia through lifestyle and environment, and this study will contribute to building our knowledge around the factors we might control to reduce disease risk throughout life.”

Prof Tim Frayling, Professor of Human Genetics, University of Exeter Medical School, said:

“The authors are not claiming that height directly alters risk of dementia. They are actually claiming something more subtle and less controversial. That is that height is a marker of early life factors which predict death from dementia. Their results show that increased height is a marker of reduced risk of death from Dementia. This is not surprising because it is well known that taller height on average, especially those born 60-80 years ago, was a predictor of generally better health and wealth. And people of generally better health and wealth are likely to have access to better healthcare and therefore their decline from dementia may be less steep.”

‘Height in relation to dementia death: individual participant meta-analysis of 18 UK prospective cohort studies’ by Russ et al. published in The British Journal of Psychiatry on Monday 3 November.

Declared interests

None declared