2023-09-18 17:30:09
In “Le Village Landais Henri Emmanuelli”, a structure which only treats patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, a sports instructor comes every day for individual or group sessions. In Dax, July 7, 2020. AXELLE DE RUSSÉ FOR “THE WORLD”
While Alzheimer’s disease – which is World Day on Thursday September 21 – affects fifty million people around the world – almost a million in France – and no treatment to date can slow its progression , acting upstream constitutes a key issue.
Certain risk factors cannot be modified: age – the main one –, sex – women are more affected –, and certain genetic predisposition factors. Others are preventable, and could delay the onset of symptoms.
In 2020, a group of experts listed twelve in lreviewed The Lancet : education level, high blood pressure, hearing loss, smoking, obesity, depression, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, social isolation, air pollution, alcohol abuse and head injuries. The last three did not appear in the previous report by these authors, published in 2017.
They calculated that, “Together, these twelve potentially modifiable risk factors are responsible for approximately 40% of dementia cases worldwide”.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Brain sport effective in postponing Alzheimer’s disease
The protective effect of educational level refers to the concept of cognitive reserve, according to which “the brain can cope with brain damage either by using its pre-existing neural networks or by activating new neural connections”, according to the definition of the Fondation Vaincre Alzheimer. A study carried out on the cohort of Framingham – a city near Boston (Massachusetts) –, ppublished in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016shows an average decline of 20% in the incidence of dementia each decade since the end of the 1970s. “This decline mainly concerns people with a higher level of education, above the baccalaureate”, underlines epidemiologist Carole Dufouil, co-author of the article, head of the Phares team (Inserm, University of Bordeaux). The findings point in the same direction in other high-income countries. “On average, in individuals with a high level of education, the most intellectually stimulated, the appearance of clinical symptoms linked to brain abnormalities seems delayed”, continues Carole Dufouil. Cognitive reserve could somehow mask the first problems.
Warning signs?
Conversely, an international team identified ten pathologies more frequently developed by patients in the two to ten years preceding their diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, compared to controls. Depression is at the top of the list, followed by anxiety, exposure to significant stress, hearing loss, constipation, cervical spondylosis, memory loss, fatigue (and discomfort), and finally falls and sudden weight loss. These results, obtained from data from 80,000 patients in France and the United Kingdom, were published in The Lancet Digital Health in February 2022.
You have 54.39% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#effective #prevention #avoidable #risk #factors