Negative Beliefs About Aging Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease: Study

Washington (PNA/Xinhua) — People who hold negative beliefs about aging are more likely to have brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a study led by Yale University said Monday.

In contrast, combating negative beliefs about aging, such as elderly people are decrepit, could potentially offer a way to reduce the rapidly rising rate of Alzheimer’s disease, a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that causes dementia in up to 35 million people worldwide.

The study, published online in the U.S. journal Psychology and Aging and led by Becca Levy, associate professor of public health and of psychology at Yale, is the first to link the brain changes related to Alzheimer’s disease to a cultural-based psychosocial risk factor.

“We believe it is the stress generated by the negative beliefs about aging that individuals sometimes internalize from society that can result in pathological brain changes,” Levy said in a statement.

Levy and her colleagues examined healthy, dementia-free subjects from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, initiated in 1958 and the longest-running scientific study of aging in the United States.

Based on magnetic resonance imaging scans, they found that participants who held more negative beliefs about aging showed a greater decline in the volume of the hippocampus, a part of the brain crucial to memory. Reduced hippocampus volume is an indicator of Alzheimer’s disease.

Then researchers used brain autopsies to examine two other indicators of Alzheimer’s disease: amyloid plaques, which are protein clusters that build up between brain cells; and neurofibrillary tangles, which are twisted strands of protein that build up within brain cells.

Participants holding more negative beliefs about aging had a significantly greater number of plaques and tangles. In both stages of the study, the researchers adjusted for other known risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, including health and age.

“Although the findings are concerning, it is encouraging to realize that these negative beliefs about aging can be mitigated and positive beliefs about aging can be reinforced, so that the adverse impact is not inevitable,” Levy added. (PNA/Xinhua) FPV/EBP