Researchers examined 983 people with an average age of 77 in New York City. Of those study participants, 237 were illiterate and 746 were literate. The participants received medical exams and took memory and thinking tests.
At the start of the study, 35 percent of the 237 illiterate participants people had dementia, compared to 18 percent of 746 literate participants who had dementia.
After adjusting for age, socioeconomic status and cardiovascular disease, researchers found that those who could not read and write were three times as likely to have dementia at the start of the study versus their literate counterparts.
At follow-up appointments conducted an average of four years after the initial testing, researchers found that 48 percent of the illiterate participants had developed dementia, compared to 27 percent of the literate participants.
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