Mediterranean diet helps against Alzheimer’s

Reuters
October 9, 2006
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15199651/

CHICAGO - A so-called Mediterranean diet centered on fruits, 
vegetables, olive oil and a paucity of red meat and dairy products 
may lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, for reasons that are 
unclear, researchers said on Monday.

The finding from Columbia University Medical Center in New York 
was based on a look at 1,984 adults with an average age of about 76, 
of whom 194 already had the debilitating brain disease and 1,790 
did not. What they ate during the preceding 12 months was analyzed 
for how well it matched the Mediterranean diet.

After taking into account other possible risk factors for the disease 
such as age and how fat or thin the test subjects were, researchers 
found that those in the top third in terms of how their diets matched 
the Mediterranean model had 68 percent lower odds of having 
Alzheimer’s disease than those in the bottom one-third. Those in the 
middle third had 53 percent lower odds.

The study, published in the Archives of Neurology, said there is 
growing evidence that the Mediterranean diet cuts the risk of stroke, 
heart disease and diabetes, suggesting that vascular factors may 
contribute to the chances of developing Alzheimer’s.

“However, when we considered vascular risk factors in our models, 
the association between the Mediterranean diet and Alzheimer’s 
disease did not change,” the report said, indicating that the diet’s apparent protective effect may work through other pathways.

In a second study in the same journal, researchers at Karolinska 
Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, reported that Omega-3 fatty acid 
food supplements may slow mental decline in some patients with 
very mild Alzheimer’s disease, but do not appear to affect those 
with more advanced cases.