A 12-year study involving 1,221 married couples ages 65 or older (part of the Cache County (Utah) Memory Study) has revealed that husbands or wives who care for spouses with dementia are six times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s themselves than those whose spouses don't have it. The increased risk is of comparable size to having the ‘Alzheimer's gene’. The researchers speculate that the great stress of caregiving might be responsible for the increased dementia risk, emphasizing the need for greater caregiver support.
Looking after a spouse with dementia greatly increases your own risk of dementia
Reference
Norton, M. C., Smith, K. R., Østbye, T., Tschanz, J. T., Corcoran, C., Schwartz, S., … Welsh-Bohmer, K. A. (2010). Greater Risk of Dementia When Spouse Has Dementia? The Cache County Study. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 58(5), 895-900. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2010.02806.x
Related News
Highest risk Alzheimer's genetic carriers take positive steps after learning risk status
Submitted by Fiona McPherson
on
It’s often argued that telling people that they carry genes increasing their risk of Alzheimer’s will simply upset them to no purpose. A new study challenges that idea.
Chronic sleep disturbance could trigger onset of Alzheimer's
A mouse study has found that mice (genetically engineered for Alzheimer’s) who were sleep deprived for eight weeks, not only showed significant cognitive impairment, but also showed a significant increase in the amount of tau protein that became phosphorylated and formed tangles. The other main characteristic of Alzheimer’s, amyloid-beta plaques, was not affected.
The findings are consistent with growing evidence of a link between sleep disturbance and Alzheimer’s, and suggests that chronic sleep disturbance accelerates Alzheimer’s pathology, and should be treated.
Sleeping on your side best for clearing waste from brain
This sounds like pseudoscience, but it appears in Journal of Neuroscience, so … Weirdly, a rat study has found that sleeping on the side (the most common posture for humans and other animals) is the best position for efficiently removing waste from the brain.
Brain waste includes amyloid-beta and tau proteins, whose build-up is a critical factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease.
Higher coffee consumption linked to lower dementia risk in women
Data from the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study, involving 6,467 postmenopausal women (65+) who reported some level of caffeine consumption, has found that those who consumed above average amounts of coffee had a lower risk of developing dementia.
Caffeine intake was estimated from a questionnaire. The median intake was 172 mg per day (an 8-ounce cup of brewed coffee contains 95mg of caffeine, 8-ounces of brewed black tea contains 47mg, so slightly less than 2 cups of coffee or less than 4 cups of tea). The women were cognitively assessed annually.
Cholesterol genes link risk of heart disease & Alzheimer’s
The APOE gene, the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, is known to be involved in cholesterol and lipid metabolism. Now the largest ever genetic study of Alzheimer’s disease, using DNA from more than 1.5 million people, has identified 90 points across the genome that were associated with an increased risk of both cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Poor sleep drives Alzheimer’s progression
Poor sleep has been associated with the development of Alzheimer's disease, and this has been thought to be in part because the protein amyloid beta increases with sleep deprivation. A new study explains more.
Experiments with mice show that sleep deprivation also rapidly increases levels of the other key Alzheimer’s disease protein, tau tangles.
The work built on findings that tau is high in older people who sleep poorly, and that, when people are kept awake all night, their tau levels rise by about 50%.
Education & IQ linked to later cognitive decline & dementia
Americans with a college education live longer without dementia and Alzheimer's
Data from the large, long-running U.S. Health and Retirement Study found that healthy cognition characterized most of the people with at least a college education into their late 80s, while those who didn’t complete high school had good cognition up until their 70s.
If you flush when you drink alcohol, drinking may increase your risk of Alzheimer’s
Research using human cell cultures and mice suggests that those with an uncommon variation of the aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 gene (ALDH2) may be more at risk of Alzheimer's if they consume alcohol. This gene variation is associated with facial redness following alcohol consumption, reflecting reduced activity of an enzyme that protects against a toxin produced by alcohol consumption (acetaldehyde). Flushing, and inflammation, is a response to the toxin.
Diabetes duration and severity associated with brain atrophy
Submitted by Fiona McPherson
on
A study involving 614 patients with type 2 diabetes (mean age 62) has found that longer duration of diabetes was associated with more brain volume loss, particularly in the gray matter. Roughly, for every 10 years of diabetes, the brain was similar to that of a non-diabetic person who was two years older.
However, the study did not confirm any association of diabetes characteristics with small vessel ischemic disease.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/rson-dda042214.php
Shift away from glycemic control in diabetes treatment
Submitted by Fiona McPherson
on
It is now realized that the focus in treating diabetes shouldn’t be so much on controlling blood sugar. New medical guidelines point to the importance of the following interventions (in order of benefit):
- smoking cessation (most important)
- blood pressure control
- metformin drug therapy
- lipid reduction
- glycemic control (least important).
This isn’t to say that blood sugar isn’t important; but the others should be dealt with first.