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Higher Dementia Risk for Certain Female Veterans

In an article written for U.S.News & World Report, health reporter Maureen Salamon reports that women veterans experience risk factors in the military that may lead to thinking and memory problems later in life.
Salamon is reporting on a study of more than 100,000 older women veterans done by Dr. Kristine Yaffe, San Francisco VA Medical Center.
Quoting from the article:
“Yaffe and her team focused on just over 109,000 female veterans (average age 69), none of whom had dementia at the study’s start. About 20,400 had depression only, while nearly 1,400 had PTSD only, and close to 500 had traumatic brain injury only. Among those included in the study, more than 5,000 had more than one of the three conditions; nearly 82,000 women had none.
Over an average follow-up period of four years, 4 percent of the women developed dementia. But women with PTSD, depression or traumatic brain injury were between 50 and 80 percent more likely to develop dementia than women without these conditions, the researchers found.
For women veterans who had more than one of the three risk factors, the risk of dementia doubled.”
To read more, click on Certain Female Vets May Face Higher Dementia Risk

 

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