Prevention of Dementia: Kristine Yaffe
Listen now
Description
We’ve had multiple GeriPal episodes about treatments for dementia, including aducanumab (here, here, and here) and lecanemab (here).  As today’s guest, Kristine Yaffe notes, part of the reason for that emphasis is that in the US we prioritize treatment, whereas other countries are ahead of us in prioritizing prevention.  Deb Barnes and Kristine Yaffe published a landmark paper in Lancet Neurology finding that up to half of dementia risk is due to modifiable factors.  If we focused on prevention, from a public health standpoint, we would achieve far more than spending millions billions on treatment. Today we talk about steps we can and should take to reduce the risk of dementia, including: Education and cognitive games (I reveal my embarrassingly poor average time on the NYT mini cross word) Physical activity Sleep Depression Smoking Social isolation Blood pressure control (listen also to our podcast on Sprint Mind with Jeff Williamson) We also delve into an exciting new trial Kristine led with others on the impact of risk factor reduction on cognition - here’s a link to press about the trial from a fall meeting presentation - article forthcoming.  And because we can’t resist, we dip into aducanumab and lecanemab at the end.  -@AlexSmithMD  
More Episodes
As Betty Ferrell says on our podcast today, nurses play an essential role in care of people with serious illness.  Who spends the most time with the patient in the infusion center? Doing home care? Hospice visits? In the ICU at the bedside?  Nurses. ELNEC (End-of-Life Nursing Education...
Published 04/26/24
Eric asks the question that is on many of our minds - is the future of AI more Skynet from Terminator, in which AI takes over the world and drives humanity to the brink of extinction, or Wall-E, in which a benevolent and empathetic AI restores our humanity? Our guest today is Bob Wachter, Chair...
Published 04/18/24