New studies reinforce Education and Cognitive Reserve –instead of drugs targeting beta amyloid– as most promising avenue to prolong cognitive health and reduce dementia risk

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dementia-progressionDemen­tia Risk Declines, And Edu­ca­tion May Be One Rea­son Why (NPR):

“Some encour­ag­ing news in the bat­tle against Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er forms of demen­tia: The rate at which old­er Amer­i­cans are get­ting these con­di­tions is declin­ing. That’s accord­ing to a study pub­lished Mon­day in JAMA Inter­nal Med­i­cine. Researchers say one rea­son for the improved out­look is an increase in education.

The study used data gath­ered in two snap­shots, one in 2000 and anoth­er in 2012, that each looked at more than 10,000 Amer­i­cans who were at least 65 years old. In the first snap­shot, 11.6 per­cent of them had some form of demen­tia. In the sec­ond snap­shot, it was 8.8 percent…

Edu­ca­tion can not only change the brain, it can change your whole life, says Haaga.

“It affects what kind of work you do, of course. It also affects who your friends are, who you’re mar­ried to, whether you’re mar­ried. All aspects of life are affect­ed by edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment,” he says…

But while the risk of demen­tia is declin­ing, the num­ber of cas­es is still expect­ed to rise. That’s because the pop­u­la­tion of old­er adults in this coun­try is increas­ing. The num­ber of peo­ple 65 and old­er is expect­ed to near­ly dou­ble by 2050.”

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Lil­ly Alzheimer’s Drug Fails to Slow Mem­o­ry Loss, Shares Plunge (Fox Business):

“Eli Lil­ly’s exper­i­men­tal drug failed to slow loss of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty in patients with mild Alzheimer’s dis­ease in a large tri­al, the com­pa­ny said on Wednes­day, a major set­back for the U.S. drug­mak­er and mil­lions of peo­ple with the mem­o­ry-rob­bing disease…The infused drug works by bind­ing in the blood­stream to a pro­tein called beta amy­loid, which are believed to cause tox­ic brain plaques that are con­sid­ered a hall­mark of Alzheimer’s.

Lil­ly said on Wednes­day that patients treat­ed with solanezum­ab did not expe­ri­ence a sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater slow­ing in cog­ni­tive decline than those giv­en place­bos, as mea­sured by a wide­ly used scale called ADAS-Cog14.”

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