Major brain changes that occur around age 50 could impact dementia risk

The brain may undergo a notable shift at midlife, as new research suggests that its protective immune cells begin to decline and are increasingly replaced by inflammatory cells at around age 50.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego; New York Genome Center; and University of California, Irvine, found that these brain changes may help explain why aging increases the chances of neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative disease, including dementia.

The study analyzed postmortem tissue from the hippocampus ...