People suffering from mild cognitive impairment can slow their progression to dementia by having up to one drink of alcohol a day, a new research has suggested.
The study published in the May 22, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.Mild cognitive impairment is an intermediary stage between normal aging and dementia that is used to categorize people with mild memory or cognitive problems and no significant disability.
Researchers assessed alcohol intake and the incidence of mild cognitive impairment in 1,445 people. They then followed 121 people with mild cognitive impairment and their progression to dementia. The participants, age 65 to 84, were part of the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging and were followed for three-and-a-half years.
The study found that people with mild cognitive impairment who had up to one drink of alcohol a day, mainly wine, developed dementia at an 85 percent slower rate than people with mild cognitive impairment who never consumed alcohol.
"While many studies have assessed alcohol consumption and cognitive function in the elderly, this is the first study to look at how alcohol consumption affects the rate of progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia. The mechanism responsible for why low alcohol consumption appears to protect against the progression to dementia isn't known,” said study authors Vincenzo Solfrizzi, MD, PhD, and Francesco Panza, MD, PhD, with the Department of Geriatrics at the University of Bari, in Bari, Italy.
“However, it is possible that the arrangement of blood vessels in the brain may play a role in why alcohol consumption appears to protect against dementia. This would support other observations that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may protect the brain from stroke and vascular dementia,” they added.
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Source-ANI
MED/M
