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Asked by peterj to Anne, Carolyn, Joe, Mariana, Nick on 18 Mar 2010 in Categories: Theories.
Question: What is the link between dietary intake of aluminium and onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
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Joseph Devlin answered on 18 Mar 2010:
Mariana is probably the best person to answer this since she is actively engaged in AD research but I’ll give it a go.
None. There is no link between aluminium intake and likelihood of developing AD. The reason this was a popular idea for a while (mostly in the 1980s) is that amyloid plaques often (always?) have an aluminium atom at their core. Because these plaques are one of the two hallmark pathologies of AD (the other being neurofibrillary tangles), anything that seems to contribute to them is investigated as a possible cause. It turns out, though, that these plaques occur because they are cut off from a larger protein called the amyloid precursor protein (APP) and are present in normal and AD brains, just to very different extents. Similarly, all people have aluminium atoms floating around their brain (and the rest of their body) and changing one’s intake of aluminium through diet or the use of anti-perspirants (which use aluminium salts) doesn’t significantly affect the prevalence of plaques.
Having said this, my information is at least ten years out of date. I’d be a little surprised if this has changed much, but if so, I expect Mariana to be the expert!
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Nick Bradshaw answered on 18 Mar 2010:
There is some non-scientific circumstantial evidence and there are a fair few alternative “treatments” which aim to help this.
However, as far as I understand it, the scientific evidence points to there not being any link between them at all.
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Mariana Vargas answered on 18 Mar 2010:
Hello there, the hypothesis that aluminum in the diet could be a factor which caused Alzheimer’s disease was proposed about 50 years ago, but since then no one has actually shown that high aluminum in the diet is the cause. The observation that initially supported this hypothesis was that aluminum was associated with the typical lesions observed in Alzheimer’s patients brains (this lesions are called plaques and tangles), but the fact that the aluminum was present in these does not mean that it causes them, this is known as “circumstancial evidence”. So, many studies have tried to prove a causal relationship and not a single one has been able to provide a direct link.
There is a very good fact sheet regarding this topic at the Alzheimer’s Trust website with reference to the actual scientific papers (http://alzheimers.org.uk/factsheet/406). -
Carolyn McGettigan answered on 19 Mar 2010:
There doesn’t seem to be reliable evidence that Alzheimer’s patients have more aluminum in their brains than other people. Furthermore, if there is any correlation between aluminium in the body and development of alzheimer’s, it’s difficult to establish whether this is causal i.e. whether aluminium led to the disease developing, or whether it’s a side-effect of the disease. And even after all of that, it would be very difficult to quantify aluminium intake in any one person. It’s in tea, beer, drinking water, toothpaste, aluminium pans and some anitperspirants, as well as many other products, so trying to reduce or elimintate intake would be pretty impossible.
I would say that there are probably other factors which are much more likely, such as age and family history.
Comments
Moderator - Sian commented on :
that’s a relief, i can still use anti-perspirant then? It’s kind of essential if you want to keep your friends 🙂
Joe commented on :
It became a weird problem when this was a hot topic. Loads of people stopped using them and switched to deoderants (which don’t contain aluminium). The other thing people did was throw out tons and tons of aluminium pans cause they were worried that cooking with them would cause Alzheimer’s. Not a good time for personal hygiene or pan-fried noodles…