Weight loss in elderly men appears to be a harbinger of dementia and contributes to their increasing frailty, researchers said on Monday. While preventing weight loss was unlikely to prevent mental decline, maintaining weight could help stave off the physical dependence on other people, falls and poor wound healing that can accompany old age, the report published in the Archives of Neurology journal said.In a three-decade study of 1,890 Japanese-American men aged 77 or older called the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study, researchers identified 112 men who developed dementia.A high proportion of the impaired subjects had lost at least 11 pounds (5 kg), or 10 percent of their body weight, in the two to four years prior to the onset of dementia symptoms.There was a similar association between weight loss and Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, wrote study author Robert Stewart of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
