Can practicing certain professions prevent Alzheimer’s disease? Researchers were interested in the link between 443 professions and the mortality rate linked to neurodegenerative disease. According to the results of their research published on December 17 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), taxi drivers and ambulance drivers would be the least at risk.
To reach this conclusion, scientists at Harvard Medical School analyzed data from nearly 9 million people who died in the United States between 2020 and 2022, taking into account their profession. After adjusting for risk factors, they found “a significantly lower proportion of Alzheimer’s disease-related deaths among people who drove taxis and ambulances for a significant part of their working lives, compared to those practicing other professions and the general population,” summarizes Science Alert.
“Neurological changes in the hippocampus”
Of the 348,328 people who died after developing Alzheimer’s disease, only 1.03% were taxi drivers and 0.91% were ambulance drivers. A figure significantly lower than the prevalence of 1.69% in the general population. For other transport professions, the death rate linked to Alzheimer’s varied from 1.65% for bus drivers to 2.34% for airplane pilots, after several factors.
“Our results 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,” says researcher Vishal Patel. Previous research in the United Kingdom had suggested functional changes in the hippocampus in London taxi drivers who spent several years driving around England’s capital.
As part of their profession, taxi drivers and paramedics must memorize street names quickly, a cognitive function associated with the hippocampus. However, “the same part of the brain involved in the creation of cognitive spatial maps – which we use to navigate the world around us – is also involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease”, underlines the researcher.
Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a slow degeneration of neurons and those in the hippocampus are the first affected, affecting short-term memory. The neurodegenerative disease then spreads to the entire brain, affecting other cognitive functions linked to language, reasoning and learning, and gradually leading to loss of autonomy.
Limitations of the study
“We hypothesized that occupations that require real-time spatial and navigational processing might be associated with a reduction in the mortality burden of Alzheimer’s disease compared to other occupations,” adds Vishal Patel who invites us to explore this avenue.
The stakes are high as Alzheimer’s disease is currently one of the main causes of disability and dependence among elderly people around the world. Although there is no treatment to treat it, medications can nevertheless slow down its progression.
Note that the existence of other factors does not make it possible to prove a direct causal link between the profession, the skills required to exercise it and the risk of death. The taxi drivers and ambulance drivers in the study died between the ages of 64 and 67 on average, while the disease most often occurs after age 65 and few women exercise these professions, even though they are more affected by the disease. Alzheimer’s disease.
