Chronic pain may up dementia risk in elderly: study

Chronic pain may increase the risk of dementia in older adults, say scientists who found that people with persistent pain show quicker declines in memory as they age.
Researchers from University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in the US analysed data from about 10,000 participants aged 60 and up over a 12-year period.
They found that those participants who were persistently troubled by moderate or severe pain declined 9.2 per cent faster in tests of memory function over the next 10 years than those who said they were not troubled by pain.
The patients who complained about persistent pain also had a small but significantly increased likelihood of developing dementia overall, researchers said.

The additional amount of memory decline in those who reported persistent pain suggested that these patients would likely have had a harder time with tasks of daily living, such as independently managing their medications and finances.
"Elderly people need to maintain their cognition to stay independent," said Elizabeth Whitlock, post doctoral fellow at UCSF.

"Up to one in three older people suffer from chronic pain, so understanding the relationship between pain and cognitive decline is an important first step towards finding ways to help this population," Whitlock said.
An increased dementia risk could be caused by painkillers, such as opioids. It could also be that the experience of pain somehow compromises the brain's ability to encode memories and other cognitive functions, researchers said.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.