Study Suggests Link between Linguistic Skills and Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's Association
Tuesday, 20 February 1996

Newly published research moves us one step closer to detecting signs of Alzheimer's disease at an early age, enabling the possibility of early intervention and treatment, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

The study, published in the February 21, 1996, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), showed a strong relationship between poor linguistic skills in early life and Alzheimer's disease in late life.

"This provocative study gives us another bit of evidence that the damage Alzheimer's disease causes to the brain starts many years before we can detect or notice the symptoms," said Zaven Khachaturian, Ph.D., director of the Association's Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute.

"Through investigations such as this, in addition to those involving apolipoprotein E (APOE), positron emission tomography (PET), and other approaches, we will improve our ability for early and accurate detection of individuals at risk for the disease," Khachaturian said. "The ability to detect Alzheimer's at an early age is critical to enable future treatments to combat the disease before serious damage has occurred. While our ultimate goal is to cure Alzheimer's, in the short term we want to prolong people's active, functional lives."

The objective of the Reagan Research Institute, launched by the Association in November 1995, is to accelerate the discovery and development of treatments for Alzheimer's disease, enable early intervention and delay onset of the disease by five to 10 years.

For this study, researchers at the University of Kentucky examined early writings of more than 90 nuns involved in a long-term investigation of cognitive function. They found those whose writings showed low linguistic abilities were much more likely to experience cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease than those with better skills, even though the writings were done nearly 60 years earlier. The scientists theorized that poor writing skills might be an early indicator that Alzheimer-type damage already was taking place in the brain.

Khachaturian cautioned that this is a preliminary study and its findings must be confirmed or corroborated by other studies. Nonetheless, the work demonstrates the importance of longitudinal studies, and of low-tech approaches, according to Khachaturian, who is former director of the Office of Alzheimer's Disease Research at the National Institute on Aging.

For more information, or to contact Alzheimer's Association, see their website at: www.alz.org