In the USA, one in three cases of Alzheimer’s disease is associated with modifiable risk factors such as physical inactivity, depression or smoking. And if we already knew that certain bad habits could promote the appearance of the disease, a new study just showed that theassociation of a sedentary lifestyle and overweight radically increased the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
According to their results published on May 9 in the journal JAMA Neurologya person suffering from midlife obesity would be 18% more at risk of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease later in life. This information is all the more worrying in that in the United States, 70% of adults are overweight, and more than 40% are obese, most of the time due to excessively sedentary lifestyles, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Physical inactivity, on the other hand, would increase the risk by 13%.
To achieve these results, the researchers collected data from 378,615 people. One in five participants was aged 65 or over, an age where the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease is already increased. Each of the participants was questioned in order to know if he suffered from one of the potential factors of the disease, in particular the level of education, depression or even smoking.
A low level of education remains a major factor in the disease
Unsurprisingly, obesity was found to be the most harmful risk factor, followed by physical inactivity and then low education. A man suffering from these risk factors would then be about 35% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, compared to 30% more for women. Among them, in the United States, Afro-Americans and Native Americans are the populations most at risk: they would indeed be more likely to suffer from obesity and hypertension, two determining factors.
But other chronic diseases are linked to Alzheimer’s, including hypertension and diabetes. Still according to the Centers for Disease Control, half of Americans suffer from hypertension and 10% of Americans have diabetes, ie more than 30 million people. And associated with each other, these pathologies would have dramatic effects on health, in particular a shorter lifespan, infertility or even heart disease.
Source :
- Risk factors associated with Alzheimer disease and related dementias by sex and race and ethnicity in the US, JAMA NeurologyMay 2022
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