Even healthy, non-demented people show striking improvements in memory after a month on an Alzheimer鈥檚 drug, say researchers in the US. The finding raises questions about whether apparently healthy elderly people, who will never go on to develop the disease, might benefit from the drug.
People with Alzheimer鈥檚 slowly lose their ability to remember and to think straight. The drug donepezil helps combat the problem by blocking the uptake of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. But it is known that even healthy people, as they age, show a deterioration in their ability to remember and perform demanding cognitive tasks.
To see what impact the drug would have on healthy adults, Jerome Yesavage at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California and his colleagues studied 18 pilots aged 30 to 70. The pilots undertook a series of 75-minute practice flights on a simulator, including complex sets of manoeuvres, new air traffic control commands every three minutes and a variety of emergency situations.
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For the next 30 days the volunteers took either donepezil or a placebo. They were then asked back for two more test flights. The pilots taking donepezil performed just as well as before 鈥� evidence that they had retained what they had learned 鈥� the placebo pilots did significantly worse. Yesavage says older pilots tended to get more benefit, though that the finding was not statistically significant.
Working memory
鈥淲e hypothesise that the drug is affecting 鈥榳orking memory鈥�, or attentional processes that allow people to focus on current tasks,鈥� says Yesavage. This idea is supported by the finding that the pilots taking the drug showed the most superiority in coping with emergency tasks and in the approach to landing.
The finding raises the interesting possibility that healthy people could take a drug to combat some aspects of normal age-related mental decline. 鈥淢any older adults who will never develop Alzheimer鈥檚 have cognitive impairments that impact their day-to-day functioning,鈥� Yesavage explains.
Gordon Winocur at the University of Toronto agrees that the findings are interesting but cautions that the study covered a only short time span. More research would be needed to assess any long-term benefits, he says.
Journal reference: Neurology (vol 59, p 125)