He who rests, rusts
Gender and inactivity favor Alzheimer’s disease
According to the latest findings, in addition to old age, the female sex, cardiac arrhythmia and lack of exercise are also risk factors for the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
A team led by Tyrolean psychiatrist Josef Marksteiner, who heads the "Psychiatry and Psychotherapy A" department at Hall Regional Hospital, followed patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease over a period of two years. During this relatively short period, the impairments caused by the dementia already increased significantly, as the doctors discovered.
Advancing time, advanced age, the presence of cardiac arrhythmia (atrial fibrillation) or even fewer "activities of daily living" went hand in hand with increasingly poorer cognitive functions in the patients.
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"Female gender also appears to be a risk factor for cognitive decline." These factors could be used to predict the progression of the disease in order to devise suitable treatment plans.
The more severe the impairment caused by the dementia, the greater the burden on the caregivers, according to the doctors: "The clinical treatment of Alzheimer's disease in the early stages should therefore focus on the patient-caregiver duo instead of concentrating exclusively on the patient."
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