Welcome to CEDAR seminar with Huixia Wang and Maria Josefsson, Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics (USBE) and CEDAR.
Effect Heterogeneity in the Impact of Lifestyle Risk Factors on Memory Across 20 European Countries
Background:
Lifestyle interventions are believed to mitigate the risk of cognitive decline and dementia in older age. Despite the known social, economic, and cultural differences across European countries, little is known about the variations in their impact on memory function within diverse geographical contexts.
Objective:
This study aims to investigate the impact of various cardiovascular, social, and health-related lifestyle risk factors on memory function across Europe.
Methods:
Data for this study were drawn from a cross-national study of older adults, the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Cross-sectional information was obtained for N = 102,851 healthy European adults aged 50 to 102 years from 20 European countries. These countries were further categorized into four regions: Northern, Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe. Memory function was assessed using a sum score comprising objective measures of immediate and delayed recall tests. A flexible Bayesian machine learning technique for multilevel data was employed to evaluate effect heterogeneity in the total sample and in education- and age-stratified analyses.
Results:
The analyses revealed negative impacts of all explored lifestyle risk factors on memory. However, striking differences were observed in the magnitude and, for some risk factors, the direction (positive instead of negative effects) across European regions. In particular, clear distinctions were noted between the Eastern/Southern and Northern/Western regions for the impact of living alone, obesity, and physical inactivity on memory.
Conclusions:
These findings underscore the heterogeneity in risk factor effects across Europe, which must be considered when planning and implementing public health interventions.
All interested are welcome to participate. If you want to participate digitally, please contact Mojgan to receive a meeting link.
