Cholesterol levels may have link to Alzheimer's risk

People who accumulate plaque on their arteries may be more prone to another insidious type of buildup — one that clogs their brains.

Scientists who tested the cholesterol levels of 147 patients found that those with the highest readings were more likely to also have the brain plaque that signals Alzheimer's disease. The research was published in the medical journal Neurology.

The findings suggest that lowering cholesterol levels early in life may reduce the prevalence of Alzheimer's, a progressive disease that starts with forgetfulness and eventually saps memories and independence. Doctors have struggled to understand, predict and slow the advance of the illness ever since it was first described by German doctor Alois Alzheimer more than a century ago.

“Our study clearly makes the point that high cholesterol may contribute directly or indirectly to plaques in the brain,” Kensuke Sasaki, the study's lead author and an associate professor at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, said in a telephone interview. “The management of cholesterol levels early on may lead to preventing Alzheimer's disease later.”

Sasaki and his colleagues tested the cholesterol of 2,587 adults aged 40 to 79 in southern Japan 23 years ago and sought permission to autopsy those patients after they died to look for plaques and tangles in the brain that signal Alzheimer's.

The results, based on the 147 participants who were autopsied, show that 86 percent of those with high cholesterol had brain plaques, compared with 62 percent of those with low cholesterol.