Reducing Alcohol Use May Reduce Falls Risk in People with Mild Cognitive Impairment: Study

Older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who drink heavily may be at higher risk for falls than those with MCI who do not have alcohol use disorder. A preliminary study of adults published in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research found that heavy drinkers with MCI are less stable on their feet compared to similarly aged people, both with and without MCI, who do not drink heavily. The strongest correlates of postural instability were age and past-year alcohol use, suggesting that reducing or stopping drinking may lower the risk of falls and maybe even dementia.

MCI refers to a slight yet detectable decline in memory and executive functions, such as planning and judgment, which can be precursors of dementia. Prior studies of people with MCI have found that problems with balance increase the likelihood that a person is developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Alcohol use worsens health problems and may heighten the risk for dementia. Despite this association, studies show that rates of heavy drinking are increasing in older people. The current study examined whether heavy alcohol use exacerbated postural instability in adults with MCI. The 226 study participants, aged 45 to 90 years old, included one group diagnosed with MCI, another with alcohol use disorder (AUD), a third group with both MCI and AUD, and a control group of people with neither diagnosis. Researchers conducted tests to assess how stable participants were while standing with their feet together and apart and with eyes open and closed, and how well they could detect touches on the soles of their feet. Participants also completed assessments of motor and cognitive abilities and related their history of alcohol use and falls. Participants did not drink any alcohol on the testing day.

The group with AUD and both groups with MCI scored worse than the control group on the cognitive and memory tests. The group diagnosed with both AUD and MCI scored the worst of the groups on tests of foot sensation.

On the postural stability tests, participants with MCI only were as stable as the control participants. By contrast, those who had MCI plus AUD and those with AUD alone were significantly less stable than the control group, especially under challenging test conditions, such as with feet together and eyes closed. Critically, the MCI plus AUD group performed at similarly impaired levels as the AUD alone group, despite lower alcohol consumption rates over the last year and the lifetime of the MCI+AUD group than the AUD only group. This observation highlights the possibility that the compounded effects of MCI+AUD heighten the risk of imbalance incurred from each condition and identifies alcohol drinking as a modifiable risk factor of postural instability and possibly falling in aging with MCI.

Reference:

Edith V. Sullivan, Stephanie A. Sassoon, Rosemary Fama, Mia Leonard, Natalie M. Zahr, Adolf Pfefferbaum, Recent drinking in alcohol use disorder as a modifiable risk factor of postural tremor and instability in mild cognitive impairment: An initial study, Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, https://doi.org/10.1111/acer.70191