In Palm Springs, If Spouse Has Dementia, Your Risk Rises, Too

If Spouse Has Dementia, Your Risk Rises, Too
By Linda Carroll

Stress of caregiving may be to blame for 6-fold increase, researchers say

Being married to someone with dementia may sharply increase your own risk of developing the condition, a new study shows.

Utah researchers found that seniors had six times the risk of developing dementia if they lived with a spouse who had been diagnosed with the condition, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. And the increased risk was substantially higher for husbands than for wives.

“The good news is that most of the spouses did not develop dementia,” said the study’s lead author, Maria Norton, an associate professor in the department of Family, Consumer and Human Development at Utah State University, in Logan. “But this does alert us to the increased risk for some of them. We need to be taking care of the caregiver and finding ways to maximize the positives of care giving.”

The study followed 1,221 couples for 12 years. All 2,442 study volunteers were at least 65 years old and free of dementia at the outset. By the end of the study, 255 of the seniors had developed dementia, two-thirds of which were Alzheimer’s disease.

Though the study did not explicitly ask whether spouses had taken on the role of caregiver, Norton says it’s safe to assume they did.

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