Researchers announced Monday that a randomized controlled trial — considered the gold standard of medical research — has finally identified something capable of significantly lowering people’s risk of developing dementia.
And rather than an expensive drug, it was a cheap and simple brain training exercise that was found to reduce dementia rates by a quarter, according to the study.
“For the first time, this is a gold standard study that has given us an idea of what we can do to reduce the risk of developing dementia,” said study co-author Marilyn Albert from Johns Hopkins University in the US. AFP.
Although there is a large amount of brain training games and apps that claim to fight cognitive decline, there hasn’t been much long-term, high-quality research proving their effectiveness.
The US team of researchers cautioned that their study – which found only one particular type of exercise made a difference – does not mean that all brain training games are effective.
Their trial, called ACTIVE, began in the late 1990s.
More than 2,800 participants aged 65 or older were randomly assigned to one of three different types of brain training – speed, memory or reasoning – or were part of a control group.
First, the participants did an hour-long workout twice a week for five weeks. One and three years later, they did four booster sessions. In total, there was less than 24 hours of training.
During follow-ups at five, 10 and most recently 20 years, the speed training was always “disproportionately beneficial,” Albert said.
After two decades, Medicare records showed that the people who did speed training and booster sessions had a 25% reduced risk of dementia.
The researchers were surprised to find that the other two types of training did not make a statistically significant difference.
The speed training involves clicking on cars and road signs that appear in different areas of a computer screen.
‘Extremely important’
So why did speed training have such an effect? Albert said the researchers could only guess.
“We hypothesize that this training affected something about connectivity in the brain,” Albert said.
An important difference was that it adapted to the person’s abilities, making it easier or harder as needed.
When asked about the study’s limitations, Albert said, “there aren’t very many”. A quarter of the participants were from minorities, suggesting that the results should apply to everyone.
Discovering the exact mechanism of why speed training worked could help researchers develop a new, more effective exercise in the future, Albert said.
But the result is already “extraordinarily important,” she stressed, noting that reducing dementia among 25% of the US population could save $100 billion in patient care.
There have been several previous studies that suggest that people who lead a healthier lifestyle have a lower risk of dementia. However, this research has been observational, meaning it cannot directly demonstrate cause and effect – unlike randomized controlled trials.
Dementia affects 57 million people and is the seventh leading cause of death globally, according to the World Health Organization.
The speed training task is called “Double Decision” and is available through the brain training app BrainHQ.
The study was published in the journal Alzheimers and Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Research.
