Mediterranean Diet reduces rate of amyloid accumulation in ApoE 4

[NF52]

This may seem like old news ("Mediterranean diet is helpful"), but the details suggest something more important.
Our Aussie friends published an extremely well-documented study on Oct 30, 2018 of the results of 3 successive PET scans over a 36-month period in a subset of an existing long-term study of brain aging on healthy older people, average age 71.

Only individuals categorised as “Aβ accumulators”, and thus considered to be on the AD pathway, were included in the analysis(N = 77).

And not surprisingly, 42% of those 77 people (32 people) were ApoE4 positive. They then used a previously validated checklist of 72 food items to divide those 77 people into high/medium/low adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet and gave them 2 additional PET scans, at 18 months and 36 months.

Here's the encouraging results:
* Those in the highest third of adherence to a MEDI diet showed the the equivalent of a 60% lower rate of increase in beta amyloid than those is the lowest third.
* Although ApoE 4 continued to be a risk factor variable for increased rate of beta amyloid deposits, they also benefited from high adherence to the MEDI diet, with the exception of 4 individuals who continued to have high rates of accumulation
* The highest factor in the diet with an association to rate of amyloid deposits: Fruit!!

The authors offer some previous evidence of why fruit (and other dietary components) be important

Vitamin C supplementation has been shown to reduce amyloid plaque burden in the brain of a transgenic mouse model of AD which had been genetically engineered to be unable to synthesize its own vitamin C ...Moreover, vitamin C has been shown to inhibit amyloid fibril formation in vitro.

Similar to the "36 holes" philosophy, they note:

Indeed, one might hypothesise that the most plausible explanation for the observed association between MeDi adherence and reduced Aβ accumulation in the current study is a complex milieu of beneficial effects rather than a single consummate anti-Aβ mechanism.

Mediterranean diet adherence and rate of cerebral Aβ-amyloid accumulation: Data from the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle Study of Ageing...

[PeterM]

Thanks, NS, for posting this. Despite the small sample size this is still an encouraging study. Real people reporting their everyday diets. The results are worth pondering assuming the reporting is reliable. I sincerely wish some research team would do the same looking at a ketogenic diet, typing for ApoE status. Plus, of course, measuring brain metabolism. It would answer a lot of questions for us E4s. Unless I've missed something we still don't know how exactly a ketogenic diet affects brain metabolism. Such a critical question.

[PeterM]

Thanks, NF52, I meant. My mistake!