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More than 700,000 people in the UK have Alzheimer's disease or another kind of dementia. Dementia damages people's ability to think and remember things, and many sufferers eventually need full-time care.
The risk of developing dementia increases with age, and as people live longer, more and more people are getting dementia. Researchers have been looking for ways to prevent the disease, and a new study has pulled together some of the most promising strategies, looking at how well they might work.
The researchers looked at 1,433 people over the age of 65. The people were asked to give detailed information about their lives, which included questions on their education, income, diet, caffeine intake, medication use and overall health. People also took a reading comprehension test.
The people were then followed up over seven years. There was a higher risk of developing dementia for people who had diabetes or depression, who ate fruit and vegetables less often than twice a day, and for people who got a low score on the reading test.
There was also a higher risk of dementia for people with a particular genetic type. A gene called apolipoprotein E has three common variations: E2, E3 and E4. The E4 type seems to increase the risk of dementia.
It's one thing for researchers to identify factors linked with dementia, but another to find out whether these factors really cause dementia. For example, does depression lead to dementia? If it does, making sure that people get treatment for depression might cut the number of people who get dementia. But it's equally possible that people in the early stages of dementia – before it's obvious to doctors that they have the disease – tend to become depressed. If that's the case, then treating depression wouldn't prevent dementia.
The researchers say they're looking for ways for societies as a whole to reduce the impact of Alzheimer's and other kinds of dementia. The sad fact is, at the moment, there's little we can do. The researchers can't be sure that addressing the factors they've identified really will help prevent dementia, but it's the most promising approach we have at the moment.
The research was published in the BMJ, which is owned by the British Medical Association. Funding came from the pharmaceutical company Novartis and from the French National Research Agency.
The researchers say that, assuming diabetes could be eliminated, the number of people with dementia would fall by 5 percent. If no one suffered from depression, dementia would fall by 10 percent. Poor diet could be responsible for 7 percent of dementia cases. If better education meant that no one got a low score on the reading test, the researchers say that 18 percent of dementia cases could be prevented. The apolipoprotein E gene causes 7 percent of dementia cases, the researchers say.
These projections, of course, rest on the assumption that all these factors really are a cause of dementia, and not linked in some other way.
Some of the factors linked to dementia are things you can change, such as your diet. Others, like your genetic type, you can't.
We can't say for certain whether a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, or getting treatment for depression or diabetes, will really cut the chance of developing dementia. But these steps are also important for your health in general.
There's a theory that keeping your mind active might help to prevent dementia, which could be why low scores in the reading test were linked to the disease. Maintaining a busy social life might be another way of helping your mind stay active.
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Source: Google News
Date: 09/08/2010