Social networks help keep elderly women alert: study

Seniors at the Greenspring Village Community in Springfield, Virginia, watch a resident bowl with the community's new Wii videogame setup March 22, 2007. Having a strong social network may help elderly women stay mentally alert and to prevent dementia, researchers said.

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Having a strong social network may help elderly women stay mentally alert and to prevent dementia, researchers said.

In a five-year study that followed 2,249 women 78 years old or older they found fewer cases of dementia among ladies who socialized with family and friends.

"Our findings indicate that it's important to think about ways to try to reduce the amount of isolation people have -- even those with families," said Valerie Crooks, of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group who headed the research team.

"It's also important for us to find out what kinds of social support groups we can create for people who are isolated based on extreme age or lack of family."

Scientists have known that there is an association between cognition and social networks. But they are not sure if poorer cognition leads to weaker social networks or if a lack of family and friends is the reason for a decline in mental capabilities.

"We haven't solved that problem, but we've mitigated it by trying to be as close to having people cognitively intact at the beginning of the study," Crooks said.

"It's been done in other places for shorter periods of time. This is kind of an expansion on that."

The researchers, who reported the finding in The American Journal of Public Health, pooled data from 2,249 women and assessed their social network and measured their cognitive levels at the start of the study.

None of the women had dementia at the beginning, but some may have had some cognitive impairment. Eighteen percent of the women who scored low in their social network had developed dementia, compared to 10 percent who had strong social networks.

Crooks said she focused on women because social isolation tends to occurs more with women.

"There have been some pretty good indication that men and women deal with their social network much differently and the effect of having a lack of it is very different for men than it is for women," Crooks said.

"Historically, women are more social animals than men. They tend to be better networkers right from the get go. They tend to like networking better, and they tend to keep up friendships," she said.

They are also more vulnerable to isolation because demographically there are more widows, Crooks added.

"People like to be connected and engaged, and women suffer more," she explained

(Reporting by Solarina Ho; editing by Patricia Reaney)