Taller Young Men May Have Lower Dementia Risk

A study in eLife suggests men who are taller as young adults may be less prone to dementia in old age, reports ScienceDaily . "We wanted to see if body height in young men is associated with diagnosis of dementia, while exploring whether intelligence test scores, educational level, and underlying environmental and genetic factors shared by brothers explain the relationship," said University of Copenhagen Professor Terese Sara Høj Jørgensen. The researchers examined data on 666,333 Danish men born between 1939 and 1959, including 70,608 brothers and 7,388 twins — and found that 10,599 developed dementia later in life. Moreover, every 6 centimeters of height in individuals above average height corresponded with a roughly 10 percent reduction in dementia risk. When accounting for the potential role of intelligence or education, the unadjusted relationship between height and dementia risk fell only slightly. The relationship between height and dementia also was present when studying brothers with different heights, suggesting genetics and family characteristics alone do not explain higher dementia risk among shorter men.