Childhood and midlife stress could increase risk of developing Alzheimer’s

Stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one or divorce, put a person at greater risk of developing dementia in later life, a recent study has found. But only if the stressful event happened in childhood or midlife.

The study, published in Annals of Neurology, included 1,290 people at increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers looked at 18 stressful life events and when in people’s lives they happened.

They took spinal fluid samples of a subset of the group (393) to look for abnormal proteins – called amyloid and tau – that are associated with Alzheimer’s. They also looked for signs of brain inflammation, which is thought to contribute to the disease, and examined grey matter volume. Grey matter is crucial for thinking and processing information and tends to reduce in people with Alzheimer’s.

Although the researchers found that stressful life events in childhood and midlife were associated with “biological markers” of Alzheimer’s (abnormal amyloid and tau), they found no association between stressful life events and reductions in grey matter.

The presence of markers of Alzheimer’s disease could indicate that childhood and midlife are periods where the effects of stress in terms of chemicals and responses in the brain are particularly strong. Childhood is a time of...

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