High levels of cholesterol might increase an individual’s risk of having Alzheimer’s disease because of plaques which may clog the brain.
The study does not directly conclude that high levels of cholesterol cause Alzheimer’s and neither decreasing the amount of cholesterol in the body will lower the risk. The proponents were also not able to establish the link between cholesterol and the presence of tangles which clog the brain in people with Alzheimer’s.
But these current findings support further the researches in the past which links insulin resistance to Alzheimer’s disease. The medical doctors suggest that controlling the levels of insulin resistance and cholesterol, which are contributory factors to heart problems, may help in formulating a strategy to prevent Alzheimer’s.
Around 5.4 million people in the United States are struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. Experts project that around 16 million maybe affected by 2050 as most population ages. There is still no cure nor established way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
The proponents of the research studied 147 brains of people who live in a certain Japanese town and were still alive in 1988 during the clinical evaluations. The autopsies were done from 1988 thru 2003. About 33% of the subjects were diagnosed with dementia although they did not have it during the initial evaluation in 1988.
Those with high cholesterol levels had higher occurrences of the protein deposits in the brain known as plaque. Tangles, another form of protein, were not as prominent in people with high levels of cholesterol.
It is still not clear though how cholesterol works to make the plaques more common and the experts are assuming that high cholesterol might be triggering another process which starts the Alzheimer’s.
They also found out that obesity and cholesterol levels drop in individuals suffering from dementia but this maybe related to their eating habits.