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Lowered hemoglobin levels can cause dementia
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Researchers at the University of California (USA) have found that too low a level of hemoglobin can be the cause of senile dementia. Recent studies related to the influence of hemoglobin levels in the blood have proven that the substance can affect brain activity and the nervous system.
The aim of the research conducted by American neurologists was to determine the relationship between anemia and senile dementia.
Senile dementia is an acquired condition, which is also called senile dementia, and in common parlance - simply senile marasmus. Most often, senile dementia is associated with a significant decrease in cognitive and intellectual activity, loss of acquired knowledge and skills, and difficulties in learning new ones. Most often, acquired dementia is associated with age and is the result of damage to the brain and nervous system.
American scientists, in the course of research into the causes of age-related dementia, have established that there is a connection between senile dementia and a disease such as anemia. Anemia is a group of common diseases, the common symptom of which is too low a level of hemoglobin in the blood. It is worth noting that anemia is not one specific disease, but rather a symptom that can be present in many diseases. Medicine knows several ways of anemia development: development due to a violation of the processes of hemoglobin formation, development due to the loss of existing erythrocytes (red blood cells) and development due to self-destruction of erythrocytes at the cellular level.
The main goal of the study, conducted at the University of California, was to study the connection between the development of cyanotic dementia and a reduced level of hemoglobin in the blood. The subjects of the study were people aged about 65 years.
For eleven years, the Americans were studying the above-mentioned dependence. During this time, more than two and a half thousand people over 60 years old took part in the experiment. Statistics show that the average age of the experiment participants was 76 years. For eleven years, each volunteer regularly took a blood test and underwent various tests that helped psychologists and neurologists determine the initial level of acquired dementia. At the beginning of the study, all participants did not have any signs of developing acquired dementia, but 400 elderly volunteers out of 2,500 were diagnosed with too low a level of hemoglobin in the blood. Eleven years later, 445 participants in the experiment were diagnosed with senile dementia. After the scientists analyzed the data, they were able to discover that the risk of rapid development of dementia is 40% higher in people with low levels of hemoglobin in the blood than in people with normal levels. A large number of volunteers who began the experiment with signs of anemia were noticed to have the first signs of senile dementia even before the end of the study.
Scientists reported that this pattern may be associated with the deterioration in brain function that accompanies anemia and, of course, can affect the functions of the nervous system and the development of mental impotence.
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