Adults With ADHD May Face Higher Dementia Risk, Study Finds
ADHD tends to get talked about as a kid thing. Trouble sitting still in class, forgotten homework, a teacher’s note sent home. But millions of adults live with it too, and a big new study suggests it may follow them into old age in a way most people don’t see coming.
The concern? Dementia.
What The Researchers Found
A team led by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine looked at whether adults with ADHD face a higher chance of memory and thinking problems later in life. Their answer was yes, and by a pretty wide margin.
The researchers dug into health records and genetic data from more than 187,000 adults age 50 and older who are part of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program. Among people with ADHD, 6.7% went on to develop dementia or cognitive impairment. For those without ADHD, it was 3.4%.
That gap got even bigger once the team factored in things like age, sex and other health conditions. After those adjustments, people with ADHD had more than four times the risk of developing cognitive impairment over time.
It Shows Up In Genes, Too
Here’s the part that makes this study stand out. The researchers didn’t only look at who had an ADHD diagnosis. They also calculated a genetic risk score for each person, which measures how closely someone’s DNA lines up with ADHD whether or not they were ever diagnosed.
People with the highest genetic risk had a 35% greater chance of developing dementia than those with the lowest.
Senior author Dr. Tharick Pascoal, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Pitt, was careful to say the study doesn’t prove ADHD causes dementia. Still, he pointed out that the same pattern appeared separately in medical records and in people’s genes, which makes it harder to write off as a quirk of how ADHD gets diagnosed.
Could It Just Be A Mix-Up?
That’s a fair question. Early dementia can look a lot like ADHD. Forgetfulness, losing focus, misplacing things. So it’s possible some people got an ADHD label when their brains were actually starting to decline.
The researchers thought of that. They reran the numbers and only counted cases where at least eight years passed between an ADHD diagnosis and the start of cognitive problems. The link held up, which makes that explanation unlikely to tell the whole story.
It May Make Dementia Harder To Live With
The study also found that having both conditions seems to take a heavier toll. Among people who developed cognitive impairment, those who also had ADHD reported worse mental health, lower quality of life and less satisfaction with their social lives. They also used about 20% more health care in the year after their diagnosis.
This Isn’t The First Warning Sign
A 2023 study out of Israel, published in JAMA Network Open, which followed more than 100,000 older adults for 17 years, found that adults with ADHD were nearly three times more likely to develop dementia. At the time, one of its senior authors urged doctors and caregivers who work with older adults to keep an eye on ADHD symptoms and the medications used to treat them.
The new research backs up that advice with a much larger U.S. sample. Co-author Dr. Douglas Teixeira Leffa said the combination of medical and genetic evidence suggests ADHD deserves a closer look as a possible factor in how the brain ages.
What We Still Don’t Know
Plenty. For one, nobody knows yet whether ADHD medications like stimulants might lower dementia risk over the long haul. Researchers are also curious whether taking care of heart health could help, since cardiovascular problems are already tied to both ADHD and dementia.
What This Means For You
If you’re an adult with ADHD, this isn’t a reason to panic. A higher risk is not a diagnosis. But it is a good reason to stay on top of your health as you get older. Keep up with regular checkups, mention any changes in memory or focus to your doctor, and don’t brush off symptoms just because “that’s always been my ADHD.”
And if you care for an older parent or relative with ADHD, it’s worth paying attention, too. Catching changes early gives everyone more options.
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