Healthcare Opportunity

Human cognitive abilities begin to decline after 45 years, long before the age of 60 as generally believed, according to a study by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) French and University College London .

“Our ability to reason and understanding begins to decline after age 45,” the Inserm in a statement accompanying the appearance, on Friday, an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

A series of tests of memory, vocabulary, reasoning, and oral expression were conducted with 5198 men and 2192 women aged 45 to 70 years, as part of a larger study, called “Whitehall II cohort” based on ten years of follow-up care and individual tests.

“The results show that cognitive performance (except for vocabulary tests) declines with age and this increasing rapidly as people age,” he says.

In 10 years, the performance in terms of reasoning declined by 3.6% for men aged 45 to 49, and 9.6% for the 65 to 70 years.

For women, the decline is the same (-3.6%) for the first age group and less pronounced (-7.4%) for women 65 to 70 years.

According to Singh-Manoux Archana, who headed the Inserm team that conducted the study, it is important “to determine the age of onset cognitive decline,” and that “it is probably more effective” action “from the beginning”, in particular drug , “to change the trajectory of cognitive aging.”

While it is clear that cognitive performance declines with age, date of initiation of this decline is controversial. Recent studies have instead ruled that the phenomenon could begin before 60 years.