Giving Compass' Take:

• According to new research, people with dementia whose parents also had dementia develop symptoms an average of six years earlier than their parents did.

• How can community support help Dementia patients? What more can be done to ease the social isolation aspect of dementia?

• Read about the rising cost of dementia in the United States and the subsequent planning that needs to be done to remedy this. 

Family history, variations in certain genes, and medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes influence a person’s chance of developing dementia. But less clear are the factors that affect when the first symptoms of forgetfulness and confusion will arise.

Factors such as education, blood pressure, and carrying the genetic variant APOE4, which increases the risk of dementia, accounted for less than a third of the variation in the age at onset—meaning that more than two-thirds remains to be explained.

…PEOPLE WITH TWO PARENTS WITH DEMENTIA DEVELOPED THE DISEASE MUCH YOUNGER THAN PEOPLE WITH ONE PARENT.

“It’s important to know who is going to get dementia, but it’s also important to know when symptoms will develop,” says first author Gregory Day, an assistant professor of neurology and an investigator at the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Read the full article on passing down dementia by Tamara Bhandari at Futurity.