An inde­pen­dent expert panel orga­nized by the NIH released yes­ter­day a thought­ful report on the state of the sci­ence for pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and cog­ni­tive decline. The report, avail­able here, sum­ma­rizes the panel’s review by saying:

• “Firm con­clu­sions can­not be drawn about the asso­ci­a­tion of mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors with cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”
• “There is insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to sup­port the use of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal agents or dietary sup­ple­ments to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s dis­ease. How­ever, ongo­ing addi­tional stud­ies includ­ing (but not lim­ited to) anti-hypertensive med­ica­tions, omega-3 fatty acid, phys­i­cal activ­ity, and cog­ni­tive engage­ment may pro­vide new insight into the pre­ven­tion or delay of cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

To put find­ings in per­spec­tive, let me sug­gest our arti­cle Brain main­te­nance: it’s about cog­ni­tive enhance­ment first, Alzheimer’s delay sec­ond. Before peo­ple get scared away by the sen­tence “there is noth­ing we know of that can pre­vent Alzheimer’s Dis­ease”, every­one should under­stand that this is true but dif­fer­ent from say­ing “there is noth­ing we can do to reduce the prob­a­bil­ity from devel­op­ing AD symp­toms” or “there is noth­ing we can do today to enhance our cog­ni­tive func­tions today and tomor­row” (both areas with solid research and use­ful guide­lines and tools). I gave a talk yes­ter­day dur­ing the San Fran­cisco Mini Med­ical School orga­nized by Cal­i­for­nia Pacific Med­ical Center/ Sut­ter Health, and mak­ing this dis­tinc­tion clear was in fact my main point.

The report pro­vides great read­ing and sev­eral excel­lent rec­om­men­da­tions for future research, includ­ing sev­eral areas we iden­ti­fied dur­ing the Jan­u­ary Sharp­Brains Sum­mit as areas where database-driven auto­mated cog­ni­tive assess­ments are likely to add much value both to research and to clin­i­cal prac­tice in years to come Read the rest of this entry »