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A major international clinical trial demonstrating that a structured lifestyle program can meaningfully slow age-related cognitive decline has been published in The Lancet, with , professor in the Department of Quantitative and Qualitative Health Sciences at 17³Ô¹ÏÍø's Kate Marmion School of Public Health, serving as one of the study's key investigators. Findings from the trial, known as LatAm-FINGERS (the Latin American Initiative for Cognitive Change), were unveiled July 13, 2026, during a Featured Research Session at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London, coinciding with the paper's online publication.

LatAm-FINGERS is the first large-scale randomized controlled trial to test a culturally adapted, multidomain lifestyle intervention for dementia prevention in Latin America, a region historically underrepresented in dementia research despite a high and growing burden of the disease. The trial enrolled 1,065 older adults between the ages of 60 and 77 who were at elevated risk of cognitive decline across 11 countries and 12 study centers. Over two years, participants were randomly assigned either to a systematic lifestyle intervention, which combined supervised physical exercise four days a week, MIND-diet-based nutrition counseling, computerized cognitive training and active cardiovascular risk management, or to a flexible lifestyle intervention consisting of general health education and self-guided advice. Participants in the structured group showed significantly greater improvement in global cognitive function, roughly 55% greater annual improvement, with the largest gains in episodic memory, followed by executive function and processing speed. The intervention proved feasible across diverse cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic settings, with strong recruitment, adherence and two-year retention, and it carried a favorable safety profile.

Suemoto, who holds a joint appointment with the Biggs Institute at UT Health San Antonio, was among the study's principal investigators. She helped conceptualize the trial, co-developed its scientific methodology, contributed to the formal statistical analyses and helped validate the cognitive findings, and she is a co-author on the manuscript's first draft. The work carries broad implications: nearly two-thirds of people living with dementia worldwide reside in low- and middle-income countries, where access to specialized diagnosis and care remains limited. Building on earlier trials including the Finnish FINGER study and the U.S. POINTER trial, LatAm-FINGERS shows that a coordinated, non-pharmacological approach to brain health can be implemented successfully and produce measurable benefits in diverse global populations, offering a scalable model for dementia-risk reduction. 

The study was funded by the Alzheimer's Association.