According to a recent study, older people with vision loss in both near and far vision are 1.7 times more likely to suffer from mild cognitive impairment, which can be a precursor to dementia. But what about those, who have either only impaired near vision or only impaired far vision? The study investigated these cases as well. It turned out that people with the loss of their far vision don’t have an increased risk, but people with impaired near vision do. The last group is 1.3 times more likely to suffer from mild cognitive impairment compared to someone with no vision impairment.

These findings are based on information from 32.715 people all over the world (from China, India, Russia, South Africa, Ghana and Mexico as a part of the Global Ageing and Adult Health project).

The researchers highlight that not everyone with mild cognitive impairment has decreased vision. However, a significant percentage does. If you just take into account the investigated number of people, around 44% of them had vision impairment!

In the near future, the researchers want to investigate whether actions to improve quality of vision can reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment, and ultimately dementia.

Curious? HERE is the source