Watch This Space

As the primary focus of the search for an Alzheimer's and dementia treatment moves away from a silver bullet pharmaceutical intervention, there is a lot of work going on to understand the power and limitations of lifestyle interventions.  There are two important studies that I'm watching and, when finished, will tell us a lot.

The first is the MIND diet study, which we discussed before.  The existing evidence is that the MIND diet may be measurably better than either the Mediterranean diet or the DASH diet at improving cognition.  There have been several studies suggesting this, but there is a belief that one more big trial is necessary to convince everyone of it's power.  This highly anticipated study employees 600 subjects and is to run three years.  We expect results in April 2021. 

If you read this blog, you know that I follow the MIND diet, and I am quite enthusiastic about its prospects.  It is particularly suited for Alzheimer's disease, because it addresses both oxidation damage in the brain and neuroinflammation.

The other important study is the US POINTER study, sponsored by the Alzheimer's Association.  The study involves 2,000-2,500 subjects who do not currently show signs of cognitive decline but are at higher risk.  It will examine the influence of lifestyle over a two-year period.  Recruitment began in 2018, and they say we can hope for results in late 2022 or early 2023.

We wrote earlier about the very important Finnish FINGER study, which produced a trove of data relating lifestyle to cognition.  (We noted that it evaluated a diet similar to the Mediterranean diet, but not like the MIND diet.)  So the United States is one of several countries trying to replicate these results, but also putting on our own spin.   For example, Finland has a pretty homogeneous population, where the US and some other countries are more ethnically diverse.  We know that Alzheimer's disease affects different ethnicities differently, so it may be that the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions may vary by ethnicity.  The US study will try to evaluate for this.