Dutch researchers examined brains that showed typical signs of the disease without the individuals having symptoms…
There is a rare, little-talked-about phenomenon in Alzheimer’s disease called “resilience.” The term “resilience” here characterizes the resilience to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease that certain “patients” may present. Dutch researchers explain that they have proof of this phenomenon, in the journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications.
To arrive at their discovery, they examined brains from the Dutch “brain bank”. The Netherlands Brain Bank stores brain tissue from more than 5,000 deceased brain donors with different brain diseases. This bank also keeps the medical history and detailed evolution of the disease with the symptoms of each donor. The researchers then discovered a subgroup of 12 people whose brains showed signs of Alzheimer’s disease but who had no clinical symptoms of the disease during their lifetime. A so-called “resilient” group. Concretely, the twelve brains showed the presence of beta-amyloid plaques (Aβ) and an aggregation of the tau protein, two characteristics which confirm the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. “What is happening in these people at the molecular and cellular level is not yet clear, commented Luuk de Vries, who led the research. We believe that genetics and lifestyle play an important role in resilience, but the exact mechanism is still unknown.”
There can be a delay of several years between the formation of the first amyloid plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s and the appearance of the first signs of the disease. According to scientists, it would be possible to delay their appearance even further. “Exercising, being cognitively active and having plenty of social contact can help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease” confirmed Luuk de Vries. Other means are recognized for maintaining cognitive functions as we age. For example: taking courses to learn new things, reading books, learning a new language, playing a musical instrument, doing puzzles, crosswords…
Conversely, it is proven that alcohol consumption, smoking, poor diet, isolation and lack of physical exercise cause the disease to progress more quickly.