APOE4 Gene Carriers Benefit From Lifestyle Improvements

Richard S. Isaacson, MD

March 26, 2018

I'm Dr Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine in NewYork-Presbyterian. I'm here for Medscape.

A recent study out of Karolinska Institutet showed in JAMA Neurology that maybe we do have some control when it comes to brain health and cognitive decline over time.^[1] Not only that, but certain people with a risk gene for Alzheimer disease may respond as well or more than patients who don't have that gene.

Let's talk about the FINGER study. As you may be aware, the FINGER (Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability) study is the first multimodal lifestyle intervention study to determine whether such things as nutrition changes, exercise on a regular basis, regular care by a treating clinician every 3-6 months, and cognitive engagement may have a positive impact on the brain over time. The original study was published back in 2015, and it showed that after 2 years of a multimodal intervention, patients who adhered to the intervention actually had better cognitive outcomes.

This new study published in JAMA Neurologylast month actually is very exciting. What it did was for the first time stratified this group of patients into people who had one copy or more of the

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