A new study of more than 300,000 Vietnam-era U.S. veterans has found that those who were exposed to Agent Orange are nearly twice as likely to develop dementia as those who were not.
The new finding, published Monday
in JAMA Neurology, is among the most substantial to date linking cognitive
decline with chemicals used for defoliation during the Vietnam War.
For the study, researchers at the
San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System examined the medical records
of thousands of veterans and found a two-fold risk of dementia for those whose
medical records indicated evidence of exposure.
According to Deborah Barnes, a
researcher with the University of California San Francisco and the Department
of Veterans Affairs, the study authors found that, over the course of time, 5%
of veterans with a documented exposure to Agent Orange were diagnosed with
dementia compared with 2.5% of vets with no known exposure.
"Even though the absolute
rates ... are low, these veterans were still relatively young, so if the risk
holds, we would expect that to increase as they age," Barnes said in an
interview with JAMA Neurology.
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