In ancient times, did Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of age-related dementia exist? This is a question that few thinkers contemporary with Aristotle or Hippocrates had to debate.
As part of a study recently published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s disease Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) analyzed medical records dating back to ancient times and found that there were very few mentions of age-related forms of dementia, suggesting that these pathologies are the result of our modern lifestyles.
Very rare mentions of memory loss
“The ancient Greeks had very, very few – but we found them – mentions of anything that might look like a mild cognitive deficit,” said Professor Caleb Finch, a university professor at the School of Medicine. gerontologist Leonard Davis of USC and lead author of the study. “When we got to the Romans, we found at least four statements suggesting rare cases of advanced dementia, but we can’t say if it’s Alzheimer’s disease. So there has been progress [de ces maladies] from the ancient Greeks to the Romans.
Professor Finch and Stanley Burstein, a historian at California State University, Los Angeles, studied a body of ancient medical writings by Hippocrates and his followers. A valuable documentation which lists the pathologies affecting elderly people at the time, such as deafness, dizziness or even digestive disorders, but which makes no mention of memory loss. According to the medical records studied, the ancient Greeks observed that aging generally led to mild cognitive impairment. However, these disorders are incomparable to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, causing a major loss of memory, speech and reasoning.
A few centuries later, during the time of ancient Rome, some more severe cases of dementia were recorded. In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder noted that the senator Valerius Messalla Corvinus had forgotten his own name. The following century, Claude Galien, a Greek doctor who treated several Roman emperors, noticed that some people aged over 80 had difficulty acquiring new knowledge.
Sedentary lifestyle and pollution involved
To explain this slow progression of different forms of dementia during Antiquity, the authors of the study developed a theory: in ancient Rome, the densification of the cities of the empire led to an increase in pollution, generating an increase cases of cognitive decline. Pollution increased tenfold by the use of a powerful pollutant within the Roman aristocracy: lead. The wealthy Romans of the time had lead water pipes, and they added lead acetate, or Saturn sugar – a highly toxic chemical compound in white powder form to their wine – to sweeten it. – poisoning himself without knowing it.
Lacking demographic data from ancient Greece and Rome, the authors sought a similar contemporary model. They thus studied the Tsimané Amerindians of today, an indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon. A people who still have a pre-industrial lifestyle to this day, who are very physically active and who have a particularly low rate of dementia: less than 1% of the population, reports the USC, compared to more than 11% of those over 65 years in the United States, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. “This is the best documented of the large populations of elderly people with minimal dementia, indicating that the environment is a major determinant of dementia risk,” says Professor Finch. Enlightening results, however, to be taken with a grain of salt: if ancient Greece and Rome had illustrious elders who exceeded the age of 80, life expectancy at the time did not allow many people to reach 80 years old, or even 65 years old.
To date, “more than 55 million people suffer from dementia in the world,” recalls the World Health Organization (WHO). And every year there are almost 10 million new cases. Dementia results from various diseases and injuries that affect the brain. And Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for 60 to 70 percent of cases.” In France, “around a million people are affected by Alzheimer’s disease, or 8% of people over 65”, according to the Overcoming Alzheimer’s Foundation. And around 225,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in France.