Christopher D. Anderson, MD, MSc, chief of the Division of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital and associate neurologist in the Department of Neurology and Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the corresponding author and Jonathan Rosand, MD, MSc, co-founder of the McCance Center for Brain Health and neurologist in the Department of Neurology and Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is an author of a paper published on November 6, 2024, in Neurology ® , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, "Health-related behaviors and risk of common age-related brain diseases across severities of genetic risk." How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? In this study, we explored whether healthy lifestyle choices, measured by a Brain Care Score (BCS), can lower the risk of stroke, late-life depression (LLD) and dementia, in individuals who are genetically predisposed to these conditions.
Developed by Mass General Brigham researchers, the BCS is a brain health tool that measures healthy lifestyle choices in the form of a score that then reflects combined risk for the most common causes of age-related brain health conditions. From the data we analyzed, we found in individuals with a higher BCS, which reflects healthier habits, had a significant decrease in their risk of stroke, LLD and dementia even when they had a higher genetic predisposition to these conditions. This prot.