▎ WuXi AppTec content team editor
According to the Guidelines for the Primary Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease in China, the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease is between 3% and 4% in people over 65 years old in China.
In other words, 3 to 4 out of every 100 elderly Chinese people currently get the disease. By 2050, the number of people with Alzheimer's disease in China is expected to reach 21 million, and about 5 out of every 100 people in the elderly over the age of 65 have Alzheimer's disease. [1]
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As the aging of the population accelerates, research on prevention strategies is urgent. As the most common neurodegenerative disease in the elderly, Alzheimer's disease is hoped to prevent this disease more effectively and in a timely manner, and Alzheimer's disease has become a public health and social problem worthy of attention worldwide.
So, it is very important for more people to understand its risk factors, especially the key risk factors that can be changed by acquired efforts.
In recent years, scientists have noticed that a healthy lifestyle and living environment may be more important than genetic factors.
A recent study from the journal Neurol Neurosurg psychiatry suggests that reducing physical weakness in older adults may be an effective strategy to prevent dementia!
Why did you think of linking weakness to this disease?
There have been a large number of recent studies that suggest that a healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of dementia, but in observational data, it is unclear whether adherence to a healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of dementia in people at high genetic risk.
It has recently been pointed out that frailty, as a comprehensive measure of health, may also play a supportive role in the prognostic assessment of patients with cognitive problems in clinical practice.
If we can better understand the relationship between lifestyle, weakness and genetics, we may be able to intervene in healthy ways and behaviors early to optimize dementia prevention strategies.
To test the hypothesis, the research team analysed a dataset of 196,000 people over the age of 60 at the UK Biobank.
The scientists calculated the participants' genetic risk and used a previously developed Frailty Index scoring system that reflects the combined accumulation of age-related signs, signs, disabilities, and diseases.
The team analyzed the frailty index, healthy lifestyle scores, and polygenic risk scores together to explore the relationship between these scores and case records and all-cause deaths for dementia.
Finally, the study came to the following conclusions:
1) A 10-year follow-up study found that 1,762 participants with dementia were indeed physically weaker before they were diagnosed compared to those without dementia.
2) Genetic risk became less important in the frailtest participants. Among those participants who were physically frail, the risk of developing dementia was high regardless of genetic condition; and even among those with the highest genetic risk, healthy people had a very low risk of developing dementia.
3) People with high frailty have a high risk of developing dementia, while people with both high genetic risk and high degree of weakness are at highest risk, and their risk of developing the disease is 6 times higher than that of people without any risk factors.
4) Even stripping out numerous genetic determinants, the risk of dementia was more than 2.5 times (268%) higher than that of low-frail participants.
Several professors on the research team said: "This study is an important step in exploring the effects of debilitating, which appears to have a unique, tunable mechanism of action in influencing the risk of dementia. This is an exciting prospect that we must explore and study as soon as possible, which could benefit more and more people around the world who may be affected by dementia. ”
So, how to intervene in lifestyle and behavior, reduce the degree of physical weakness, and prevent dementia in advance?
1. Regardless of genetic risk factors, controlling smoking, drinking, weight, eating habits, and engaging in a certain level of exercise can prevent dementia.
2. The living environment can change the risk of dementia. Studies have found that a greener living environment helps prevent dementia and other chronic diseases.
3. The environment and lifestyle have many times greater effects on dementia than genetic risk. Pay attention to these two points - maintaining a healthy body and reducing the degree of physical weakness - I believe it will be beneficial to many people who are at risk of dementia.