This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

A law that required British teenagers to stay in school for an additional year had an unexpected consequence nearly 50 years later: fewer dementia diagnoses.

Researchers at the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Michigan studied a 1972 British compulsory-schooling reform that raised the minimum age for leaving school from 15 to 16. They found that the additional education resulting from the reform reduced diagnoses of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias decades later.

The new study also uncovered a striking second finding: The reduction in dementia incidence happened even among people with high genetic susceptibility to the disease. The results suggest that education may be particularly protective for those at greatest inherited risk, challenging the idea that genetic risk is an unchangeable forecast of future health.

The study is believed to be the first to document a causal relationship between education and diagnosed dementia and to show that education can mitigate inherited risk of dementia. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

People with more education have long been known to face lower dementia risk. But that pattern alone does not establish whether schooling causes the difference. For example, people with more education may have grown up in different family and socioeconomic circumstances that also influence their health later in life.

The researchers addressed that problem by studying a 1972 reform in England, Scotland and Wales that raised the minimum age for leaving school from 15 to 16.

Source link