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Anxiety,
depression linked to Alzheimer's
People who are tense or prone to
worry appear to be more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, according
to a new study. Researchers at Rush University
Medical Center in Chicago found that those who most often experienced
negative emotions like depression and anxiety were twice as likely to
develop Alzheimer's than those least prone to such emotions. The research was drawn from a
large study of older Roman Catholic nuns, priests and brothers. The study
focused on 797 people, with an average age of 75, who were evaluated for
both psychological distress and mental decline when they started the study
and then yearly. Participants were rated for being
distress-prone by being asked to rate their level of agreement (strongly
disagree, disagree, etc.) with such statements as "I am not a
worrier" and "I often get angry at the way people treat
me." During an average of 4.9 years of
follow-up, 140 people in the study developed Alzheimer's. Those scoring in
the top 10 percent of the distress scale were twice as likely to develop
the brain disease than those who scored in the lowest 10 percent. "People differ in their
tendency to experience psychological distress and this is a stable
personality trait throughout adulthood," said Robert Wilson, lead
author of the study that appears today in the journal Neurology. The
magazine is published by the American Academy of Neurology. "Since chronic stress has
been associated with changes in the hippocampal area of the brain and with
problems with learning and memory, we wanted to test the theory that
psychological distress may affect the risk of developing Alzheimer's
disease." Being prone to stress was also
related to lapses in episodic memory -- being able to recall a list of
words or a story, for instance. Problems with this sort of memory are
common in those with Alzheimer's. And the study showed that
episodic-memory ability declined 10 times faster in those who were
stress-prone than those who ranked low in stress. Wilson cautioned that "much
more research is needed before we can determine whether the use of
antidepressants could help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease." The researchers were also able to consider whether proneness to distress was an early sign of Alzheimer's rather than a risk factor by examining the brains of 141 participants who died during the study. Of those, 57 met the physical criteria for probable Alzheimer's disease. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
