Smoking May Increase Dementia Risk

Researchers tracking over 46,000 men ages 60 and older for an average of eight years found that smoking may increase the risk of developing dementia, reports the New York Times . Compared with continual smokers, men who had quit for up to four years had a 13 percent lower risk, those who had quit for four years or more a 14 percent lower risk, and never-smokers a 19 percent lower risk. The study was published in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology . The authors acknowledge, however that they had no data on education level, which is a risk factor for dementia, and that the eight-year follow-up may not have been long enough to pick up all cases of dementia.