Berlin.
Chinese scientists have discovered a clear connection with neuronal signs of aging in pain patients.
Those who suffer from chronic pain live with an increased risk of senile dementia. A team of Chinese scientists came to this conclusion in a long-term comparative study. According to the research published in February 2023, people who suffer from multiple persistent pain sites are particularly at risk. According to this, chronic conditions contribute to the fact that part of the brain ages faster – with direct effects on that memory.
Based on the British Medical Biodatabase, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing found a link between long-term physical ailments and accelerated aging processes in the hippocampus. The research group led by psychologist and study author Tu Yiheng compared the world’s largest medical database, the UK Biobank, with almost half a million recorded medical profiles of health insurance patients between the ages of 40 and 69.
Dementia caused by symptoms: The more sources of pain, the faster the brain breaks down
On the basis of data from around 19,000 patient files, the scientists determined not only the connection between chronic pain and memory disorders in old age, but found a successive increase in risk in patients with multiple sources of pain. With 1.6 percent of the cases observed, almost twice as many pain patients developed symptoms of dementia over the comparison period of twelve years as the 0.9 percent pain-free test subjects. 1.2 percent of patients who only suffered from a permanent complaint developed dementia. The prerequisite for inclusion in the study was that the participants underwent neural computed tomography.
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The more chronic sources of pain, the faster the part of the brain that is responsible for learning and memory ages. “In other words, the hippocampus of a 60-year-old with two chronic pain points has the same size as that of a pain-free 62-year-old,” wrote the research team led by study leader Tu in the scientific article that appeared in the journal “PNAS”. Anyone who has health problems at a young age must therefore look up age-related sequelae set. The brain scans revealed that hippocampal mass depletes four times faster in pain sufferers with five complaints than in subjects with two pain sites — meaning brains with multiple pain pathologies age eight years faster.
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1.8 million Germans suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s
In their study, the Chinese scientists blame disrupted processes in the central nervous system for the shrinking brain mass. The neuronal constant fire of chronic complaints stresses the brain structure. As a result, under the impression of overload, the areas in the brain that are responsible for processing stimuli and transmitting them from the brain degenerate Short-term to long-term memory.
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Factors that have already been established that promote the development of dementia include high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmias, diabetes and vascular diseases. obesity, especially through the consumption of unhealthy fats, smoking, alcohol consumption and a lack of physical activity also promote the development of Alzheimer’s or dementia. According to an estimate by the German Pain League, around 12 to 15 million people live in Germany with permanent complaints, the German Alzheimer Society calculates, as of 2022, with around 1.8 million people suffering from dementia, and the trend is rising.
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