The Science of Alzheimer’s
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What is the overall purpose of the WHO’s new Alzheimer’s risk‑reduction guidelines?
Show Me The Science with Professor Luke O'Neill, a Newstalk original podcast.
Hello, Luke O'Neill here and welcome to Show Me The Science, my weekly podcast. And this week, big one actually, because it's a big topic, affects many, many people. This is the science of Alzheimer's disease. But in particular, the WHO has issued very clear guidelines on what you can do to ward it off, to decrease your risk of getting Alzheimer's. And I want to give you a list of these. And it's kind of well known over the years anyway. But the fact that WHO has announced it makes it serious because they've looked at all the data, all the studies. And the reason they've done it actually is over the past five years, the evidence that these things work or are useful. has got stronger and stronger. And I think it must be on the back of a big Lancet paper that came out about nine months ago now.
But now they've issued clear instructions to people of how to decrease your risk of Alzheimer's disease. And then the second thing I want to tell you about is a big way to do it is to take the shingles vaccine. And again, a big report this week. If you get the shingles vaccine, it decreases your risk by 50%. Isn't that remarkable? 51%. So that just shows you another way to ward off this disease. Now, it's a very important disease. Everybody has heard of it. There are 57 million people worldwide suffering from Alzheimer's disease. In Ireland, we have 67,000 people. They're predicting around about an increase of 10 million per year is happening. So the numbers are going to go like the 67, 80, 90, up every year, right?
So now people are dying as well, sadly, of it. But the numbers are going up and up and up because there's roughly 10 million new cases diagnosed every year. And I needn't tell people how devastating this disease is. The key feature, of course, is memory loss. It begins with that.
How does the shingles (zoster) vaccine cut Alzheimer’s risk by about 50%?
It's a type of dementia, of course. And people often ask me, is it different? It's slightly different. 70% of dementia cases are Alzheimer's. It's inclined to present with memory loss. That's one of the first features. You get personality changes. You get various features that make it a bit more severe than dementia. Dementia will also end up with memory loss. But dementia sometimes begins with other things like a decision making. And one of the other things in dementia. If it's Alzheimer's though, they diagnose it partly on these symptoms. Memory loss being the first key feature that emerges. And then they can image the brain and measure the brain and see changes happening in what's called a hippocampus, which I'll come back to in a minute.
Now, so basically it's a disease of the brain and it affects memory and personality and it progresses. That's the tragedy. There's no real way to slow it down. There's a couple of breakthroughs recently. There are two drugs actually, which somewhat slow it down, very small effect, but they do do something. There's a big debate on that because the effect isn't huge and they're expensive. And again, this week, actually a third drug was announced by Biogen. And they claim it's slowing it down a little bit. I'll come back to that in a minute when I come on to the mechanism of what's going on. Now, what are these risk factors? Well, when you put them all together and you observe them overall in the population, you will decrease your risk by 45%.
of Alzheimer's developing. And that's across the entire population. It's tricky these studies sometimes because they're population-based. It doesn't mean that if an individual does them, they will have a 45% decrease risk. Over the entire population, on average, there's a 45% decrease risk.
Which lifestyle factors does the WHO list as the biggest modifiable Alzheimer’s risk drivers?
That's complicated, I know, but some don't respond to these modifications. Some do. It's a big mix. So some people will follow them all and they'll still develop Alzheimer's, which tells us how complex this disease is. But there's no doubt, though, from these guidelines who are issuing, if you do these things, there's a good chance you'll decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer's at least somewhat.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall purpose of the WHO’s new Alzheimer’s risk‑reduction guidelines?
0:00–1:43
2
How does the shingles (zoster) vaccine cut Alzheimer’s risk by about 50%?
1:43–3:14
3
Which lifestyle factors does the WHO list as the biggest modifiable Alzheimer’s risk drivers?
3:14–4:24
4
Why are smoking, high alcohol intake, hypertension and diabetes highlighted as key risk factors?
4:24–6:10
5
How do cognitive training, social activity and hearing health protect against Alzheimer’s?
6:10–8:15
6
What role does brain inflammation and the immune response play in Alzheimer’s progression?
8:15–9:47
7
Which emerging drugs target beta‑amyloid and tau, and what benefits do they show?
9:47–11:53
8
What is the economic impact of Alzheimer’s worldwide and why do prevention strategies matter?
11:53–12:32