Smoking linked to mid-life memory loss: study

Smoking apparently presents an increased risk of memory loss in people at mid-life, a new study says.

Smoking apparently presents an increased risk of memory loss in people at mid-life, a new study says.

The study by Severine Sabia and colleagues of France’s Institute National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale, reviewed data from 10,308 London-based civil servants age 35 to 55, who took part in a study between 1985 and 1988.

The researchers said that they found strong links between smoking and cognitive and memory problems later in life.

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“First, smoking in middle age is associated with memory deficit and decline in reasoning abilities,” they wrote in a report in the June 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. “Second, long-term ex-smokers are less likely to have cognitive deficits in memory, vocabulary and verbal fluency.”

“Third, giving up smoking in mid-life is accompanied by improvement in other health behaviours. Fourth, our results… suggest that the association between smoking and cognition, even in late mid-life, could be underestimated because of higher risk of death and non-participation in cognitive tests among smokers.”

The authors stressed that “the results are important because individuals with cognitive impairment in mid-life may progress to dementia at a faster rate”.