In Brief

Factors that affect risk of dementia

It's not always easy to distinguish the normal forgetfulness that occurs as people age from the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. Although clinical tools exist for other diseases — such as the Framingham Heart Index, which assesses risk of having a heart attack within 10 years — nothing similar exists to predict risk of dementia.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, published a late-life dementia risk index based on data collected from the 3,375 people, ages 65 and older, participating in the Cardiovascular Health Cognition Study.