Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Telegraph:

People who have more than two alcoholic drinks a day develop Alzheimer’s disease five years earlier than those who do not drink, a comprehensive study linking the condition to lifestyle has found.

Those who smoke are affected by the illness two years earlier than non-smokers, while those who smoke and drink are likely to hasten the onset of the disease by seven years.

People who suffer from high cholesterol in middle age are one and a half times more likely to go on to develop Alzheimer’s.

The impact of lifestyle on the development and the advance of the disease, which affects more than 400,000 people in Britain, was disclosed in two separate studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology’s Anniversary in Chicago.

Dr Alina Solomon, of the University of Kuopio in Finland, who worked on one of the studies, said: “Minding heart health might protect the brain as well. People need to be aware of ‘the big picture’, not focus only on the heart or only on the brain.”

Alzheimer’s causes loss of memory, personality changes and is terminal.

The Alzheimer’s Society has warned that in half a century up to 2.5 million people in the UK could have dementia unless steps were taken to encourage more healthy lifestyles.

Dr Ranjan Duara, of Mount Sinai Medical Centre in Miami Beach, Florida, studied nearly 1,000 people with possible or probable Alzheimer’s.

He said smoking and drinking were “among the most important preventable risk factors”.

Heavy drinkers — classed as those who had more than two drinks a day — developed Alzheimer’s 4.8 years earlier than those who were not heavy drinkers.

Heavy smoking — defined as 20 cigarettes per day — brought on the disease 2.3 years sooner.

The study also looked at people with a genetic variant called APOE linked with the disease and found that they developed the disease three years sooner than those without the variant.

Those who had all three risk factors developed Alzheimer’s at an average age of 68.5 years.

Those with none developed the disease at an average age of 77.

The second study, by Dr Solomon with Dr Rachel Whitmer, of the Kaiser Permanente care organisation in California, found that people with high cholesterol in their early 40s were more likely to develop the leading cause of dementia than those with low cholesterol.

The study involved 9,752 men and women in northern California who underwent health checks between 1964 and 1973 when they were between the ages of 40 and 45 and who remained with the same insurance company until 1994.

From 1994 to 2007, researchers obtained the participants’ most recent medical records to find 504 people had a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

The study found people with total cholesterol levels between 249 and 500 milligrams were one-and-a-half times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those people with cholesterol levels of less than 198 milligrams, considered normal.

People with total cholesterol levels of 221 to 248 milligrams were more than one-and-a-quarter times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Solomon said: “It would be best for both physicians and patients to attack high cholesterol levels in their 40s to reduce the risk of dementia.”

Dr Dermot Neely, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, for the cholesterol charity Heart UK, said: “This research strengthens the conclusions of earlier studies linking common cardiovascular disease risk factors and Alzheimer’s disease and confirms what we already believe to be true - that control of these risk factors is important not only in preventing heart disease and stoke, but also in preventing age related cognitive decline.

“There enough evidence to recommend risk factor reduction, especially treatment of high blood pressure and stopping smoking, but there is not yet enough evidence to recommend statins to prevent Alzheimer’s, however.”