Cognitive decline accelerated in over 50s during pandemic, study finds

The covid-19 pandemic brought a “sustained decline in cognition” to people in the UK aged over 50, including those who did not fall sick, showed a large longitudinal study that tracked the same people before and after SARS-CoV-2 struck.The research, published in the Lancet Healthy Longevity,1 found that the normal process of cognitive decline accelerated sharply in the first year of the pandemic. In the second year the rate of decline slowed but remained worse than the rate before the pandemic.In the two years from March 2020 the 3142 participants in the study, who had a mean age of 67, saw their scores in executive function tests fall at an annual rate 49% faster than in the year before the pandemic. Their working memory scores fell 55% faster.The decline was statistically robust for both executive function and working memory in the overall cohort of 3142 participants, in the 752 who…
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