New study reveals Cab and ambulance drivers have a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease
A Harvard study shows that cab drivers and ambulance drivers have the lowest risk of dying from Alzheimer's compared to other professions. Researchers suspect that "map memory" plays a role.
10.01.2025, 04:30
10.01.2025, 07:20
SDA
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- A Harvard study shows that cab drivers and ambulance drivers have the lowest Alzheimer's mortality rate.
- After adjusting the data for age curves, the Alzheimer's mortality rate in the overall population was 1.69 percent.
- Researchers suspect that the use of "map memory" and changes in the hippocampus, a central brain region, could offer a protective effect against Alzheimer's.
Cab drivers are significantly less likely to die from Alzheimer's than people in other professions. This was shown in a new study by Harvard University in Boston in the USA, which was published in the British Medical Journal.
This may be due to the effect of complex tasks on the brain, including a "map memory".
For the study, the research team led by Anupam Jena analyzed the official death notices in the United States between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021. The documents also list the occupations of the deceased. The study analyzed a total of 443 occupations.
Of the almost nine million deceased people analyzed, 3.88 percent were reported to have Alzheimer's disease as the cause of death. Among cab drivers, however, only 1.03 percent died from this dementia. The rate among ambulance drivers was even lower at 0.74 percent.
Because cab drivers have a comparatively low life expectancy of 67.8 years in the USA, mainly due to social circumstances, and ambulance drivers only have an average life expectancy of 64.2 years, the researchers adjusted their calculations according to the age curves to take this factor into account. This is because the incidence of Alzheimer's increases with age.
Connection with map memory
"After adjustment, ambulance drivers (0.91 percent) and cab drivers (1.03 percent) had the lowest proportion of deaths due to Alzheimer's disease of all the occupations studied," the authors wrote in the study. In contrast, the average Alzheimer's mortality rate after adjustments in the overall population was 1.69 percent.
The question remains as to the possible reason for this observation, which does not yet constitute causal evidence. The researchers suspect a connection with map memory. Previous studies have shown that changes occurred in the hippocampus region of the brain in cab drivers. The hippocampus is the brain region that is involved both in the creation of cognitive spatial maps and in the development of Alzheimer's disease.