Education and work help beat Alzheimer's

Oct 22 2008

New research has revealed that education and a mentally demanding job protects people from Alzheimer's disease.

In study involving 242 people with Alzheimer's disease, researchers at the San Raffaele University and Scientific Institute and the National Institute of Neuroscience in Milan, Italy found that people with the same level of memory impairment, those with more education and more mentally demanding jobs had significantly more changes and damage in their brains from Alzheimer's disease than people with less education and less mentally demanding jobs.

The study tested the theory that education and demanding jobs create a buffer against the effects of dementia on the brain, or create a cognitive reserve.

The researchers tested the memory and cognitive skills of 72 people with mild cognitive impairment, and 144 people with no memory problems and also used brain scans to measure the amount of brain glucose metabolism, which shows how much the brain has been affected by the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer's disease - they then followed the group for an average of 14 months.

During that time, 21 of the people with mild cognitive impairment developed Alzheimer's disease.

Mild cognitive impairment is a transition stage when some memory problems are occurring beyond what is normal for a person's age but not the serious problems of Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Garibotto who led the study says their brains were able to compensate for the damage and allow them to maintain functioning in spite of the damage and he offers two possible explanations - the brain is strengthened through education and occupational challenges - or genetic factors that enabled people to achieve higher education and occupational achievement, might determine the amount of brain reserve.

Dr. Garibotto says it isn't possible to determine which accounts for the findings but says the same results were found in people with Alzheimer's and people with mild cognitive impairment who developed Alzheimer's during the study, which suggests that the cognitive reserve is already in effect during the mild cognitive impairment phase before Alzheimer's begins.

People with Alzheimer's disease and people with mild cognitive impairment who developed Alzheimer's during the study had metabolic dysfunction in the areas of the brain consistent with Alzheimer's disease, whereas the healthy people and those with mild cognitive impairment who did not develop Alzheimer's disease had no brain metabolism problems.

The study was supported by NEST-DD (Network for Efficiency and Standardization of Dementia Diagnosis), 5th European Research Program and DIMI (Diagnostic Molecular Imaging) Network of Excellence, 6th European Research Program.

The research is published in the current issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.