Eating seafood could lower dementia risk


Tuesday, 23 February, 2016

A study has found that moderate seafood consumption could be linked with lesser risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and while seafood consumption was associated with higher brain levels of mercury, there was no evidence linking higher mercury levels with Alzheimer’s disease.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), examined whether seafood consumption is correlated with increased brain mercury levels and also whether seafood consumption or brain mercury levels are correlated with brain neuropathologies.

Among the 286 autopsied brains of 544 participants, brain mercury levels were positively correlated with the number of seafood meals consumed per week. In models adjusted for age, sex, education and total energy intake, seafood consumption (one or more meal[s]/week) was significantly correlated with less Alzheimer’s disease pathology.

Fish oil supplementation had no statistically significant correlation with any neuropathologic marker.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to report on the relationship between brain concentrations of mercury and brain neuropathology or diet. The finding of no deleterious correlations of mercury on the brain is supported by a number of case-control studies that found no difference between Alzheimer’s disease patients and controls in mercury concentrations in the brain, serum or whole blood,” noted the authors.

The authors noted that the findings were from a very old (average age at death was 90), largely non-Hispanic white cohort and may not be generalised to younger adults or other racial or ethnic groups.

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