Us Grandparents 'smarter' Than Uk Counterparts

[churchill]

American seniors scored better on cognitive tests than their British counterparts in the first transatlantic study of how ageing affects memory. The findings suggest that factors such as education, hypertension, and alcohol use might make the difference.

Previous studies have compared physical health, finding British seniors to have lower prevalence of nearly every chronic disease like diabetes or cancer. This new study of 8299 older Americans and 5276 older British found that Americans scored better on a certain cognitive challenge that measures immediate and delayed recall abilities.

Memory test

Kenneth Langa of the University of Michigan led a team of US and UK researchers in analysing the data from two previously existing large-scale studies of adults over the age of 65. As part of the studies, seniors were given a list of 10 nouns, such as hotel, river, tree, skin, gold, village, baby, and table.

They were then immediately asked to recall as many of the items as they could. After five minutes of non-related questions, they were asked again how many items they could remember. Finally, during the interview they were also asked the current day and full date. They were awarded 10 points for each of the recall tasks and four points for the time and date, making a maximum possible score of 24 for the test.

Americans outscored the British by 1.4 points on average and also scored higher in all three age sub-ranges. For adults aged 65 to 74, the average American scored 13.8, while the average Brit scored 12.5. For 75 to 84-year-olds, the scores were US 12.2 to UK 10.5. The largest gap occurred in those 85 and over, where the scores were US 10.1 to UK 8.3.

Depression link

"It's like a 'view from 30,000 feet' study," says Langa. "We can't be certain, but we have some hypotheses about what might be going on."

As part of their analysis, the researchers compared cognition scores to a number of factors such as education, financial stability, depression, and alcohol use.

According to their statistical analysis, higher levels of education and income accounted for some of the superior American performance. Higher incidences of self-reported depression may have worked against the British, as previous studies have linked depression with poor cognitive performance in the elderly.

Moderate alcohol use correlated with improved scores, giving a 0.75-point advantage to those who reported drinking one drink in the last week versus those who reported none.

Booze boost

Previous studies have shown that moderate alcohol use correlates with better cognitive performance in those over age 50. Given that 50 per cent of Americans and 15.5 per cent of the English reported no alcohol use, moderate alcohol use played in the UK's favour. "English folks would be more behind if they didn't drink as much," says Langa.

The immediate and delayed recall test is only part of a full cognitive battery. "It's important, but it's not the only measure of cognition," says Richard Suzman of the US National Institute of Aging, the body that funded the work. He stresses that more research will need to be done to verify the results and possible causes.

The analysis was conducted as part of the American Health and Retirement Study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Both studies cover groups that are representative of their respective national populaces

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1737...unterparts.html

[elibangkok]

"English folks would be more behind if they didn't drink as much," says Langa.

This has to be a joke, right? Have there really been studies showing drinking helps cognitive performance? Seems specious.

Anyway, not surprising results. US > UK

[Mosha]

The Brits have a longer life expectancy than the US. Shit almost every country with a universal health care system as a longer life expectancy than the US. May be they were asking teens in the US

[jackdanielsesq]

I have an uber-pater from both sides of the pond, so wont go there.

They are both special, not suspicious or supercilious even

BR>Jack

Seems specious.

[astral]

Alcohol is a know carcinogen

and cancer effects and treatment are pretty horrific.

http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/cancer/a/aa000520.htm