Join us on October 24, at Noon ET for our CLSA webinar, “Potentially modifiable risk factors for low cognition and dementia: Could Canada reduce dementia by 50%?” The webinar will be presented by PhD candidate Surim Son and Dr. Manuel Montero-Odasso and Dr. Mark Speechley of Western University.
Cognitive impairment in aging is a multifactorial process involving several modifiable risk factors and pathological changes. It has been suggested that 35% to 45% of dementia cases worldwide are attributable to 9 to 14 risk factors. However, less is known about the extent to which these risk factors contribute to low cognition and dementia in Canada.
This webinar will focus on a study that estimated the potential population impact of 12 modifiable risk factors in middle-aged and older Canadian adults. The findings indicate that nearly 50% of dementia cases in Canada could be prevented by modifying 12 lifestyle risk factors highlighting that strategies to increase physical activity and promote effective management of hearing health, obesity, and hypertension have the greatest potential to mitigate a large proportion of dementia cases in Canada.
Surim Son is a PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University. Her PhD research is looking to identify the specific combination of risk factors that are most likely to produce the greatest benefit on preserving cognition when targeted at population level. Her research interests centre around understanding dementia risk factors and optimizing multidomain trial design to promote dementia risk reduction and prevention and healthy aging.
Dr. Montero-Odasso is a geriatrician and scientist who leads globally recognized research programs on gait and cognition as well as lifestyle clinical intervention trials in adults with mild cognitive impairment to combat falls and reduce dementia risk in older adults. He is also a research executive member of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA), president of Canadian Geriatric Society, and a member of the Worldwide FINGER Network. He is currently leading the SYNERGIC-2 trial which is the first large-scale personalized lifestyle intervention trial in Canada.
Dr. Speechley is a professor emeritus in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University. As a methodologist, he has designed numerous observational and experimental clinical trials in aging and neurodegenerative conditions including dementia. He played a critical role in designing the Canadian study to postpone the onset of dementia through multidomain lifestyle modifications, including SYNERGIC-1 and 2 trials.
