Are your elderly patients giving their bank details to strangers to collect supposed lottery winnings, or sending money to an international man of mystery romancing them via email?

These may be early warning signs of cognitive impairment, researchers warn.

US researchers say the results of their prospective cohort study provides “compelling evidence” that low scam awareness is a harbinger of adverse cognitive outcomes among older people without dementia.

“We found an association between low scam awareness and increased risk for incident Alzheimer dementia and MCI (mild cognitive impairment) that was relatively independent of global cognitive function,” say the authors, from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Centre in Chicago.