14 DAY TRIAL // A new thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, reveals an interesting connection between the onset and development of dementia-related disorders and a patient's level of education. It would appear that the more education a person got in his or her early years, the more the emergence of the first signs of disease is delayed. The work additionally discovered that, even if the disease sets in, its development can be significantly slowed down by education. The new findings could eventually allow scientists to develop faster diagnosis tools for the condition, and also to create new therapeutic approaches, AlphaGalileo reports.
“This mechanism has previously been observed at a late stage of the disease, primarily in cases of Alzheimer’s, which is a type of dementia. We wanted to investigate how education affected the disease in the early stages of dementia, known as mild cognitive impairment,” says University of Gothenburg research scientist Sindre Rolstad. This translates into shorter attention spans for patients, reduced memory skill, and a general reduction of their ability to think clearly. “We wanted to find out whether highly educated patients with mild cognitive impairment differed in terms of tolerance of the disease from patients with intermediate and low levels of education,” Rolstad explains.
“Highly educated patients with mild cognitive impairment who went on to develop dementia over the next two years had more signs of disease in their spinal fluid than those with intermediate and low levels of education,” the expert adds. He and his research group based their conclusions on analysis of test participants' spinal fluid. Readings collected from it allowed them to infer whether symptoms of dementia exist in the brain or not. The scientists also found that well-educated individuals could tolerate more disease in their cortices, while showing the same symptoms as their less-affected, less -educated counterparts.
“We found that the highly educated patients who did not develop dementia during the course of the study showed signs of better nerve function than those with lower levels of education. This finding means that the highly educated not only tolerate more disease in the brain but also sustain less nerve damage during the early stages of the disease,” Rolstad concludes.