Exercise May Slow the Ravages of Alzheimer’s

Photo by Larry Williams/Larry Williams and Associates/Corbis

Today, we bring you two stories in our special report on the international Alzheimer's conference in Chicago. Come back tomorrow for more news.

Researchers today reported that in a study of the effects of exercise and fitness on people with early Alzheimer’s disease, those with higher physical fitness ratings had the less atrophy in key areas of the brain associated with memory. The findings suggest that maintaining cardiorespiratory fitness helps blunt the effects of Alzheimer’s and may even help modify and correct some of the damage the disease causes.

The study, reported today at the 2008 Alzheimer’s Association conference in Chicago, is “the first to pinpoint disease-related changes in memory regions of the brain using a new MRI imaging process,” says Robyn Honea, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City. The study compared the brain volume of 56 healthy people with 63 people who have early Alzheimer’s—all were over 60.

“We could look at areas of the brain responsible for learning and memory in people with early Alzheimer’s disease,” she says. “And what we saw was that in the men and women with higher cardiorespiratory fitness, the size and volume of those areas were better preserved.”

Those who were not as fit had more atrophy in those areas, suggesting that exercise may slow down the progress of the disease, Honea says.

Moreover, “what’s exciting is that one of the key regions of memory, the hippocampal area, is one of the only regions in the brain capable of adult neurogenesis, or growth,” says Honea. “In studies with animals, exercise does induce brain growth. So it could be possible that with exercise and fitness, those areas in the human brain might also undergo positive growth.”

The study assessed fitness of the subjects through treadmill tests, then looked at their brains using new MRI processing and analysis techniques. The next step, Honea says, will be to take a large group of older adults with Alzheimer’s and put them on an exercise program for a year to see if there is any growth in that key memory area.

Another new exercise study, reported at the conference today by researchers from Australia, found that home exercises, supervised by a caregiver, helped men and women with early Alzheimer’s disease improve their balance and maintain their independence and quality of life over a yearlong period.

People with Alzheimer’s tend to fall about three times more often than older people who have no cognitive impairment. And the more they fear falling, the less independent they become.

The study, by researchers from Western Medicine, Nedlands, Western Australia, stressed home exercises that improved balance. Those who were doing the exercises fell significantly less often than those in the control group in the first six months; they also improved their balance over the 12 months while those in the control group experienced deterioration in their balance.

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As people become increasingly affected by changes in their memory and thinking, and as the risk of falls grows, the “quality of life can deteriorate,” Megan J. Wraith, an author of the study from Western Medicine, said in a press statement. She said the results of the home exercise study “are sufficiently encouraging to pursue this approach and develop caregiver home-based exercise programs on a larger scale.”

Since falls can lead to costly hospitalization or placement in a nursing home, the researchers suggest that targeting this high-risk group could prevent injuries and save money.

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