NYU researchers looked at data on 152 study participants who were part of the Glostrop Aging Study, a study which followed Danish women and men over a twenty year period, from age fifty to age seventy. To test their brain skills, they performed cognitive testing on these men and women - both at age fifty - and again at age seventy and ninety. When they tested them at age seventy, they found a striking association between the degree of gum inflammation they had and their performance on these cognitive tests. The men and women who had the most periodontal inflammation when tested at age seventy were nine times more likely to perform poorly on cognitive testing. It seems less likely that another variable or risk factor accounted for these results since researchers controlled for other risk factors for Alzheimer
