A recent study confirms that alcoholism would have a negative impact on patients likely to develop Alzheimer’s.
On June 12, the results of a study were reported by the journal in Euro. It suggests a new link between alcohol and cognitive decline.
Thus, excessive alcohol consumption would accelerate the onset of this decline. The goal for the researchers was to look at “the effects of the interaction between history of alcohol intoxication and genetic susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease on cognitive performance”.
A decline at an early age
To arrive at their results, the scientists compared two groups of mice. The individuals of the first were subjected to alcohol consumption for several months, those of the second were carriers of genes making them vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers then observed that rodents exposed to alcohol gradually lost their ability to learn and remember spatial patterns, and that they also showed these signs of cognitive decline at an early age.
Acceleration of the effects of Alzheimer’s
Pietro Paolo Sanna, from the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the Catholic University of Rome, summarizes:
When we compared mice exposed to alcohol to the same type of mice with early or late disease progression, we found that the effect of alcohol was to accelerate the effects of the disease.
Beyond the fact that it is crucial to understand the impact of alcohol on the development of a neurodegenerative disease, the scientists note that these observations could contribute to the understanding of the functioning of Alzheimer’s disease, which still preserves today a part of mystery.