Smoking Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease

There are many reasons to quit smoking, and here is one more: heavy smoking in middle age greatly increases the risk of dementia later according to a study from the health plan Kaiser Permanente. More than 21,000 members filled out a survey on their health behaviors between 1978 and 1985. From 1994 to 2008 the researchers noted any diagnoses of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia. In the course of those decades, approximately 5,000 of the participants developed dementia.
People who smoked at least two packs a day were more than twice as likely as non-smokers to be in that group. Their risk of Alzheimer’s disease was about two and a half times higher than non-smokers and their risk of vascular dementia was nearly three times higher. It has long been common knowledge that cigarette smoking has a deleterious effect on the blood vessels, so the results with vascular dementia, caused by blood clots or clogged arteries in the vessels feeding the brain, is not too surprising. The investigators concluded that “the brain is not immune to long-term consequences of heavy smoking.”
[Archives of Internal Medicine, online Oct. 25, 2010]