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Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention or Cognitive Enhancement?

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An inde­pen­dent alzheimersexpert pan­el orga­nized by the NIH released yes­ter­day a thought­ful report on the state of the sci­ence for pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and cog­ni­tive decline. The report, avail­able here, sum­ma­rizes the pan­el’s review by saying:

  • “Firm con­clu­sions can­not be drawn about the asso­ci­a­tion of mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors with cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”
  • “There is insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to sup­port the use of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal agents or dietary sup­ple­ments to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s dis­ease. How­ev­er, ongo­ing addi­tion­al stud­ies includ­ing (but not lim­it­ed to) anti-hyper­ten­sive med­ica­tions, omega‑3 fat­ty acid, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, and cog­ni­tive engage­ment may pro­vide new insight into the pre­ven­tion or delay of cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

To put find­ings in per­spec­tive, let me sug­gest our arti­cle Brain main­te­nance: it’s about cog­ni­tive enhance­ment first, Alzheimer’s delay sec­ond. Before peo­ple get scared away by the sen­tence “there is noth­ing we know of that can pre­vent Alzheimer’s Dis­ease”, every­one should under­stand that this is true but dif­fer­ent from say­ing “there is noth­ing we can do to reduce the prob­a­bil­i­ty from devel­op­ing AD symp­toms” or “there is noth­ing we can do today to enhance our cog­ni­tive func­tions today and tomor­row” (both areas with sol­id research and use­ful guide­lines and tools). I gave a talk yes­ter­day dur­ing the San Fran­cis­co Mini Med­ical School orga­nized by Cal­i­for­nia Pacif­ic Med­ical Center/ Sut­ter Health, and mak­ing this dis­tinc­tion clear was in fact my main point.

The report pro­vides great read­ing and sev­er­al excel­lent rec­om­men­da­tions for future research, includ­ing sev­er­al areas we iden­ti­fied dur­ing the Jan­u­ary Sharp­Brains Sum­mit as areas where data­base-dri­ven auto­mat­ed cog­ni­tive assess­ments are like­ly to add much val­ue both to research and to clin­i­cal prac­tice in years to come [Read more…] about Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion or Cog­ni­tive Enhancement?