http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/scitech/SciTechRepublish_787269.htm
Researchers link fatty diet with Alzheimer's disease Tuesday, 18 February 2003 A diet high in unsaturated, unhydrogenated fats such as vegetable products and some oils may help lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease but antioxidant vitamins have no such protective effect, according to two separate studies published this week. Doctors at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Centre in Chicago said they reached their conclusions on the fat question after examining 815 people aged 65 and older who did not have Alzheimer's at the start of a nearly four-year study. Those in the study were asked to recall their dietary habits during a more than two-year period before the study began. At the end of the study the researchers found that 131 people had developed Alzheimer's, the debilitating disease that leads to memory loss and eventual physical incapacity. People who consumed the most saturated fat - the kind of fat that comes from meat, poultry, dairy products and palm or coconut oils - had 2.3 times the risk of developing Alzheimer's compared with those who consumed the lowest amount of saturated fats, the researchers said. The study did not speculate on why the different kinds of fats were associated with different risks for the disease. It said that previous research suggests diets high in total fat, saturated fat and dietary cholesterol may increase the risk of dementia for reasons that are not clear. The study, published in the February issue of the Archives of Neurology, was financed by the National Institute on Aging, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. In a second study published in the same journal, researchers at Columbia University in New York concluded that carotenes and vitamins C and E obtained from diet or through supplements are not associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer's. The question arises because antioxidants - vitamins and other nutrients found in food - appear to reduce cellular damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals are tiny particles from normal metabolism that may damage neurons, possibly leading to Alzheimer's. The report said a look at 980 people who were free of dementia at the beginning of a four-year study found that 242 developed Alzheimer's over the course of the research, and that consumption of carotenes or vitamins A and E had no protective effect. The same journal carried a third study from researchers at the University of California School of Medicine in San Diego that said post-menopausal women with Alzheimer's given estrogen therapy had no improvement in their cognitive function after one year of treatment. Some previous studies had suggested estrogen helped in such cases. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
