THE ESSENTIAL
- Taxi and ambulance driving are linked to a lower death rate from Alzheimer’s disease than other occupations.
- This could be explained by the fact that these workers put more strain on their hippocampus, which is important for spatial memory and navigation and one of the first regions of the brain to atrophy in cases of cognitive decline.
- Since the study is only observational, the researchers point out that the results are not conclusive, but “they allow us to formulate hypotheses.”
Several pieces of evidence highlight the fact that mentally and intellectually stimulating jobs protect the brain against Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. “We hypothesized that occupations, such as taxi and ambulance driving, which require real-time spatial and navigation processing, might be associated with a reduction in the burden of disease-related mortality. ‘Alzheimer compared to other professions’, said Vishal Patel, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (United States).
Alzheimer’s: lower mortality due to the disease among taxi and ambulance drivers
To verify this theory, the researcher and his team analyzed death certificates, from the National Vital Statistics System, for adults over the age of 18 working in 443 different occupations between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2022. team took into account sociodemographic information, including age, gender, ethnicity, and education level, in addition to the occupation the person held during the major part of his professional life. Of the 8,972,221 deceased people included in the research, 348,328 (3.88%) died of Alzheimer’s disease. Among taxi drivers, 1.03% (or 171 out of 16,658) died from this neurodegenerative pathology, while among ambulance drivers, the rate was 0.74% (10 out of 1,348).
After adjustment, ambulance drivers (0.91%) and taxi drivers (1.03%) had the lowest proportion of Alzheimer’s disease deaths of all occupations examined. This trend was not observed in other transportation-related jobs that use predetermined routes, such as bus drivers (3.11%) or airplane pilots (4.57%), which rely less on real-time spatial and navigation processing. “This trend has not been observed for other types of dementia”can we read in the results published in the journal BMJ.
“Neurological changes” mediated by the hippocampus or “elsewhere”
“Our data highlight the possibility that neurological changes in the hippocampus or elsewhere in taxi and ambulance drivers may explain the lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease. (…) Because yes, the hippocampus, namely the The same part of the brain involved in creating the cognitive spatial maps that we use to navigate the world around us is also involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. explained Anupam B. Jena, who participated in the study.
In the conclusions, the authors indicate that this is observational research. Thus, no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. However, “These results allow us to formulate hypotheses.”
