A study published in July in the American Journal of Public Health found that elderly women with strong social networks of family and friends are less likely to develop dementia than women who have smaller social networks.
Funded by the National Institute on Aging, the five-year study at Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation followed 2,249 women 78 years or older who did not have dementia in 2001 and found over the next five years that the women with large social networks were 26 per cent less likely to develop dementia.
