People living in northern countries at greater risk of developing dementia: study

Researchers say people living in northern countries could be more likely to develop dementia, BBC reported.

According to an Edinburgh University study, environmental factors, such as lack of sunlight, could raise the risk of developing the illness.

The disease was mapped in Scotland among 37,000 people born in 1921 and in a second study second study scientists involved over 26,000 Swedish twins.

Researchers found that the probability of people developing the condition increased in proportion to how far north they lived.

Exposure to vitamin D, which was made in the skin by the action of sunlight, had been shown to be linked to healthy brain function.

In Scotland, the study revealed a substantial change in disease risk depending on where people lived as adults, but there was no change in risk was seen where people lived as children.

The researchers found that in Sweden twins living in the north were two or three times more like to develop dementia as against those in the south, after accounting for factors such as age, gender, and genes.

According to Dr Tom Russ of the University of Edinburgh's Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre if this geographical variation in dementia risk was the result of one or more environmental risk factors, and if these could be improved in the whole population, the findings suggested that it might be possible to halve dementia rates.