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TUESDAY, Feb. 18 (HealthDayNews) -- Two new studies offer mixed news when it comes to staving off Alzheimer's disease through your diet.
One says vitamins C and E and carotenes don't decrease the risk of getting Alzheimer's. However, the second says that eating a diet that's low in saturated and hydrogenated fats and high in unsaturated fats just might help fend off the disease that afflicts 4 million Americans.
Both studies, which were funded by the National Institute on Aging, appear in the February issue of the Archives of Neurology.
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"One of the things we're hoping for at the National Institute on Aging," says Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, associate director of the institute's Neuroscience and Neuropsychology of Aging Program, "is that eventually in our attempts to slow the development of Alzheimer's we will have a combination of lifestyle changes plus very directed, specific drugs that together will give us a chance of really fighting this dreadful disease."
In the study on vitamins, researchers followed 980 elderly patients, who did not have dementia at the outset of the study, for four years. The participants answered questionnaires about their eating habits at the beginning of the study and several times during the next four years.
During the course of the study, 242 people developed Alzheimer's disease. Researchers found no link between their intake of antioxidant vitamins and whether they got the disease.
About one in 10 people over 65 and nearly half of those over 85 have Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association. While the exact cause of the disease is unknown, researchers believe that free radicals, tiny particles generated by normal metabolism, can over time damage neurons in the brain and contribute to dementia.
Antioxidants reduce the damage done by free radicals, so researchers had hoped that eating foods or taking supplements high in antioxidants would help prevent the disease.
Though that hope wasn't borne out in this study, don't stop taking your vitamins E and C just yet, Morrison-Bogorad says.
Other studies have shown antioxidants can help stave off dementia. The National Institute on Aging is currently funding randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials -- the gold standard of scientific testing -- on antioxidants and Alzheimer's.
The people in that study are taking 10 times the dosage of vitamin E that people reported they took in this study, Morrison-Bogorad says. "That may change the outcome," she says.
In the study on fats and Alzheimer's, researchers looked at random sample of 815 Chicago-area people ages 65 and older who did not have Alzheimer's disease.
Study participants had completed questionnaires about their eating habits more than two years before the study started.
After four years, researchers identified 131 people with dementia.
They found those who ate diets that were low in saturated fats and hydrogenated fats and high in unsaturated fats had a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer's.
Unsaturated fats are found in vegetables oils (such as canola, corn, safflower or olive), in nuts and seeds, in liquid margarine and mayonnaise.
Saturated fats are those found in animal products, such as butter, red meat, whole milk and cheese.
Snacks foods, such as commercially-produced baked goods, pretzels and other chips, and hard margarine are sources of hydrogenated fats. Hydrogenation is a chemical alteration of vegetable oils that occurs during the manufacturing process.
"What's important is that so many people are under the impression that they should cut fat out of their diets, when in fact the vegetables fats are very good for you and you should think about getting a little at every meal," says Martha Clare Morris, lead author of the study and an epidemiologist at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago.
Study participants were divided into five groups based on their intake of the various kinds of fats. Those in the group that consumed the least of the "bad" fats and the most of the "good" fats had an 80 percent less chance of developing Alzheimer's than those in the group that consumed the most "bad" fats and the least "good" fats.
The group with the least incidence of Alzheimer's ate about 38 grams of "good" fats per day, Morris says, while those with the highest incidence of Alzheimer's ate only about 19 grams of "good" fats per day.
Morrison-Bogorad says the study is very interesting, but needs to be confirmed by other research.
More information
The Alzheimers Association (www.alz.org) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (www.ninds.nih.gov) have information about diagnosing and treating Alzheimer's.
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