An Ironic Tragedy: Are Spouses of Persons with Dementia at Higher Risk for Dementia than Spouses of Persons without Dementia?

Abstract

This issue of JAGs includes a paper by Norton et al. (2010)1 that reports a 600% greater risk of dementia in spouses of persons with dementia relative to spouses of persons without dementia even after controlling for important risk factors for dementia. The authors explain their provocative finding using three arguments previously employed to understand the higher risks of health problems seen in spouses of persons with dementia relative to spouses of persons without dementia. These include assortative mating, a shared life-style, and caregiving.2 However, no caregiver data are presented to support their argument (e.g., hours of care, length of care, caregiver distress, health habits and health problems); and this study was not designed to test the hypothesis that caregiving is a risk factor for dementia. Despite these limitations, many of the spouses of persons with dementia were probably caregivers; and, although it is not possible to conduct mediation analyses to interpret this study’s result, the literature includes several caregiver outcomes that may be postulated as reasons for the observed higher dementia risk in spouses of persons with dementia.