Links Between Chronic Illness and Late-Life Cognition: Evidence From Four Latin American Countries.
OBJECTIVES
We explored the links between chronic diseases and cognitive ability using datasets of community-dwelling older adults from Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay from the SABE (Health, Well-Being, and Aging) survey.


METHODS
Ordinary least squares (OLS), Tobit and linear probability models, adjusting for extensive health and socio-demographic factors, were implemented separately for men and women and complemented by a series of robustness checks.


RESULTS
We find a negative association between the number of chronic conditions and cognitive decline that has the following characteristics: (a) differs across gender, (b) increases with the number of chronic conditions, (c) is larger among those individuals in the bottom of the cognitive distribution, (d) and is different across types of chronic conditions.


DISCUSSION
These results suggest that returns from preventive policies to reduce cognitive decline would increase if they were targeted to seniors with chronic conditions and implemented before the impact from multiple comorbidities makes the cognitive decline too steep to be reversed.
['Socal|Mariana P|MP|', 'Trujillo|Antonio J|AJ|']
D000368:Aged D000375:Aging D001938:Brazil D002677:Chile D002908:Chronic Disease D003071:Cognition D000078331:Correlation of Data D003710:Demography D005260:Female D006801:Humans D057187:Independent Living D008297:Male D008800:Mexico D008875:Middle Aged D012959:Socioeconomic Factors D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires D014583:Uruguay
cognition aging chronic conditions cognitive decline Latin America