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MONDAY, June 23, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Autopsies of the brains of monks and nuns shows more years of schooling can protect against the ravages of Alzheimer's disease.
Matching brain against brain, researchers found men and women with more years of education have less decline in cognitive function, even when the physical signs of Alzheimer's disease are identical.
"There is fairly good evidence that education and things related to education protect against getting the clinical signs of Alzheimer' disease," says Dr. David A Bennett, director of the Alzheimer's disease center at Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago and lead author of the report in the June 24 issue of Neurology.
Indeed, any mental activity seems to be good for the aging brain, Bennett says. He cites a study, reported just last week, showing that reading books, playing cards, doing crossword puzzle puzzles and playing board games reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
"It's a question of information processing, and even playing games is information processing," he says. "Even playing video games is information processing, and having conversations with people is another kind of information processing."
The new report involves 130 participants in the long-running Religious Orders Study -- not only Roman Catholic monks and nuns but also priests and lay brothers. All agreed to take tests of 19 measures of cognitive function, on average eight months before they died. After death, the researchers autopsied their brains, measuring the number and extent of amyloidal plaques, the tangles of protein seen in Alzheimer's disease.
Using a complex mode of analysis, the researchers say that on a scale where the average participant scores 100, the presence of 18 plaques -- more than enough for a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease -- lowered the score of someone with just a bit of college attendance to 82, the study finds. For someone with postgraduate college education and the same number of plaques, the score was 96.2.
There are a couple of cautions in applying the results to everyone, Bennett says. The people in the study were highly educated, compared to the general population, and the mental activity that was measured took place decades before Alzheimer's disease would be expected to develop.
Nevertheless, he says, the study shows "there is something about education that allows the brain to tolerate a much larger burden of Alzheimer's disease without depressing cognitive functions."
"It's interesting to see that within this fairly limited range of high education we see this effect," says Neil Buckholtz, chief of the dementias of aging branch at the National Institute on Aging, which funded the study. "What we have to do now is look at a greater range of education, as well as try to figure out what the mechanisms are."
One hypothesis is that education may somehow increase the number of synapses, connections between nerve cells, in the brain, Buckholtz says.
"These researchers have brain tissue and potentially could look at these kinds of things in the brain," he says."
Whatever the mechanism, Bennett says, the findings create "a win-win situation. By getting educated, you protect against Alzheimer's disease."
More information
You can keep abreast of the latest developments in Alzheimer's research by consulting the Alzheimer's Association or the National Institute on Aging.
