People who are physically fit are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new US study.
The researchers, led by Dr. Edward Zemrini of the Veterans Medical Center in Washington, D.C., who made the announcement at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurology in Seattle, analyzed data from 649,605 people with an average age of 61. years and who did not have Alzheimer’s at the beginning of the study. Participants were divided into five groups according to their physical condition, based on cardiopulmonary tests and a treadmill fatigue test.
By the end of the multiannual study, the group with the worst physical condition had Alzheimer’s with a frequency of 9.5 cases per 1,000 human-years, compared with 6.4 cases of the disease per 1,000 human-years in the group with the best physical condition. The chance of Alzheimer’s decreased as the fitness improved: 8.5 cases / 1,000 in the second worst group, 7.4 / 1,000 in the middle and 7.2 / 1,000 in the second worst group.
The final “verdict” of the study, after taking into account other factors that could affect the likelihood of Alzheimer’s, was that people with better physical condition have a 33% lower risk of this neurodegenerative disease than those with worse physical condition. Those in the next best fitness group have a 26% lower risk, those in the middle have a 20% lower risk, while those in the second worst fitness group have a 13% lower chance of Alzheimer’s.
“An important finding of our study is that as people improve their physical condition, their risk of Alzheimer’s disease decreases. “The idea that one can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s just by increasing physical activity is very promising, especially since there are not enough treatments to prevent or stop the progression of the disease,” Zamrini said.
Another French study by researchers at the Paris Brain Institute and the University of Bordeaux, published in the medical journal The Lancet Digital Health, identified some risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease up to 15 years before the first symptoms occur.
The study analyzed anonymous data from the medical records of nearly 80,000 patients in France and Britain (half with Alzheimer’s and the other half without the disease). He thus found ten pathological conditions that develop more often in people who will later develop Alzheimer’s than in the general population. These conditions are as follows: Depression, anxiety, exposure to high stress, hearing loss, constipation, arthritis, memory loss, fatigue, falls and sudden weight loss.
“The question, however, remains whether these health problems are risk factors, symptoms or warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease,” said researcher Thomas Nendelck.
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