Calories and Alzheimer’s
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Scientists are finding that reducing calories might be a way to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease. This ScienCentral News video explains how a study in mice is offering new clues in fighting the disease.
Alzheimer's brake?
Calorie-restriction -- consuming 30-percent fewer calories than normal -- is the only scientifically proven way to slow the process of aging in organisms ranging from yeast to mammals. Now a new study in mice shows that through a similar mechanism, calorie restriction may also slow or prevent Alzheimer's disease.
"A decrease in amount of calorie intake might have a causal effect in prevention of Alzheimer's disease," says Giulio Pasinetti, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He and his team conducted the study in a strain of transgenic mice destined to develop Alzheimer's-like symptoms. The mice that were fed a calorie-restricted diet, mainly by a reduction in their carbohydrate intake, over a period of six months, had fewer disease symptoms than their normal-diet counterparts.

"With this kind of calorie restriction we were able to improve memory function – I would say five-fold times more efficient," says Pasinetti. The amount of beta-amyloid peptides, molecules that cause the build-up of characteristic Alzheimer's plaques, was also much lower in the brains of the mice on the low-calorie diet.

The calorie restriction was initiated between four and five months of age, when the mice were in the first stages of developing Alzheimer-type symptoms. Pasinetti says that this corresponds roughly to the stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment in people, which isn't Alzheimer's yet, but is a high-risk condition for developing it. Since drug intervention at a late stage of the disease is unlikely to ever be successful because of the intensity of damage done, prevention is the main goal.

Although he says it's too soon to know whether calorie restriction can prevent Alzheimer's in people, the results of his studies have already convinced Pasinetti to change his own behavior.
"I decided personally and my family, definitely to have a major reduction in the total amount of food that actually we eat," he says.
While the weight of the evidence is building that drastically cutting calories might just be worth it, eventually it might not prove necessary. Pasinetti says that the ultimate goal is to design a pill that imitates calorie restriction without actually requiring us to eat less – leaving us both with healthy minds and healthy appetites.