Study Backs Exercise for Alzheimer Victims

A combination of exercise for Alzheimer's disease patients and training for their caregivers helps combat depression and improve the health of disease victims, a recent study suggested.

The report from the University of Washington, Seattle, involved 153 patients living at home or elsewhere in the community who had not been institutionalized for the illness.

The disease, which erases memory and leads to dementia, causes severe physical problems in its end stage, when victims are often unable to walk or move about and confined to bed.

For three months, the caregivers of the patients studied were given instruction either in routine medical care or a combination of training in exercise and behavioral problems.

Two years later, the exercise/training group continued to have better physical activity than the other patients and its members were less likely to have been placed in an institution because of behavioral problems.

Among patients with higher depression levels when the study started, those in the exercise and training group improved more significantly and maintained that improvement, the authors said.

"This study demonstrated that an integrated treatment program designed to train dementia patients and their caregivers in exercise and behavioral management techniques was successfully implemented in a community setting," said the report published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Caregivers were able to learn how to encourage and supervise exercise participation, and patients participating in this program achieved increased levels of physical activity, decreased rates of depression, and improved physical health and function," the study said.

"Because exercise is also associated with reduced depression in adults without dementia, targeting patients with coexisting depression and dementia might enhance treatment effects," it added.

The Chicago-based Alzheimer's Association said that what was new in the study was proof that "an approach that combines caregiver education with patient exercise can have both immediate and long-term effects on both physical role functioning and depression."

The fact that the effects persisted at two years into the study is significant, it added, since many studies had not looked at the more long-term effects.

Reference Source 89

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