Study indicates possible link between chronic stress and Alzheimer's disease

Some 160,000 people have some form of dementia in Sweden, Alzheimer's disease being the most common, a figure that is rising with our life expectancy.

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet have published a study in Alzheimer's Research & Therapy that addresses possible associations between chronic stress, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. The study shows how people aged between 18 and 65 with a previous diagnosis of chronic stress and depression were more likely than other people to be diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease.

The study shows that the risk of Alzheimer's disease was more than twice as high in patients with chronic stress and in patients with depression as it was in patients without either condition; in patients with both chronic stress and depression it was up to four times as high

The risk of developing cognitive impairment was elevated about as much. A patient is deemed to be suffering chronic stress when he or she has been under stress with no opportunity for recuperation for at least six months.

"The risk is still very small and the causality is unknown," says the study's last author Axel C. Carlsson, docent at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet.

"That said, the finding is important in that it enables us to improve preventative efforts and understand links with the other risk factors of dementia."

Reference: Johanna Wallensten, Gunnar Ljunggren, Anna Nager, Caroline Wachtler, Nenad Bogdanovic, Predrag Petrovic, Axel C. Carlsson. Stress, depression, and risk of dementia – a cohort study in the total population between 18 and 65 years old in Region Stockholm. Alzheimer's Research & Therapy, 2023; 15 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s13195-023-01308-4