Alzheimer's Progresses Faster in Educated People

Nrbelex writes "Bloomberg news is reporting that 'High levels of education speeds up the progression of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in next month's issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Mental agility dropped every year among Alzheimer's disease patients with each additional year of education, leading to an additional 0.3 percent deterioration, the researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York found. The speed of thought processes and memory were particularly affected.'"

Comments

A bit misleading title

[dcw3]

From TFA:
Previous studies have shown that people with high levels of education are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. The new study shows that the brains of more educated people can tolerate changes for longer periods of time, meaning signs of decreased mental agility typical of Alzheimer's disease appear later. When those signs do appear, the disease progresses faster than it does in less educated patients.

So, the more educated are actually less likely to have symptoms at the same age. I'm curious how they measured the drop off in ability, and the article doesn't say.

Re:Have the statistics been properly done here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alzheimer's is not the deterioration of intelligence, and education isn't a metric for gauging intelligence. Education is a metric of knowledge aggregation. The disease affects the memory of the patient. I think it's pretty clear why it would be more noticeable if your ability to retain information was impeded if you dealt with a lot of information.

Re:Bogus

[blakestah]

The findings are bogus: they cite a 0.3% difference between more highly educated Alzheimer's patients and their counterparts. The counterargument is that plenty of people who wound normally go to grad school insead choose to work in industry. This small lifestyle difference for four years in a subject's late twenties should not effect tests given at age 65+. More likely is that some other factor is introduced by lifestyle differences between the two major career paths.

Well, it is already established that more educated people have a lower risk of Alzheimer's, and a later onset. This study, however, follows a few hundred already diagnosed patients for five years, and notes that the rate of cognitive decline is faster in the more educated patients. Probably they just didn't have enough coffee Be a little more interesting when the study itself is available instead of the press release.

How could you possibly know that?

[flyinwhitey]

"That's hardly significant. Statistically, you can't really call that a correlation."

Ok, Statty Mc Statenstein, do the math for us. I've included a handy link to test for significance, all you have to do is plug in the numbers and give us your answers.

http://www.coolth.com/siginsig.htm
http://www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu/2000/techbrief/t echbrief5.htm
http://www.visualstatistics.net/Visual%20Statistic s%20Multimedia/z_square_ratio.htm

Since we all like to have facts that support our arguments, all you have to do is present your math so we can verify that the is "hardly significant".