The Alzheimer’s disease Relates to nearly a million people in France. It particularly affects the elderly: it is very rare before the age of 65 and affects approximately 15% of those over 80 years of age. Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease. Neurons slowly deteriorate, causing many progressive symptoms. The most common symptom of the disease is memory loss. But it is not the only case: patients also have disturbances in executive functions and orientation in time and space. Today, this disease can not be I am not cured nor caution. The knowledge of the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease is very incomplete. When a patient is diagnosed, the disease is often already well advanced at this point.

Study on 80,000 people

A French team has published the results of a study involving 80,000 patients in the prestigious journal scalpel. Half of them developed Alzheimer’s disease while the other half formed a control group and never developed neurodegenerative disease during the studied period.

The authors tested the link between disease onset and 123 health factors through statistical analyses. The results show an association between a list of 10 diseases and the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease within 15 years. The first of these diseases is depression, followed by anxiety and exposure Stress Important, hearing loss, constipation, cervical spondylosis, amnesia, fatigue, falls and sudden weight loss. Some of these diseases were already known to predispose patients to Alzheimer’s disease, such as depression or hearing loss. Others are much less so, such as cervical spondylosis or constipation.

Just statistical links

The authors point out that their study only highlights statistical links, which do not constitute evidence of cause and effect. A thorough study of the underlying mechanisms is still necessary.

Moreover, the article quoted here does not make it possible to know whether suffering from depression leads to Alzheimer’s disease or whether depression is an early symptom of the disease. However, this type of information remains very useful to better understand the disease and try to prevent it.

Soon, the authors will expand their analyzes to a greater number of cases (26 million!) and other degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s diseaseThe Charcot’s disease or the Multiple Sclerosis.