Alzheimer’s and cancer rarely strike together, study

Alzheimer’s disease and cancer rarely strike together concluded researchers in the U.S. who found no such association between vascular dementia and cancer, adding weight to the idea that cancers and neurological disorders are less likely to occur together, a trend first noticed in people with Parkinson’s, and later in people with multiple sclerosis and Down syndrome.

The discovery was the work of Dr. Catherine M. Roe, research instructor in neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and colleagues, and a study about it was published online in the journal Neurology, with Roe as the lead author.

Roe told the media that they still found people who had both Alzheimer’s and cancer but to a lesser degree than they expected:

“If there truly is an inverse association, it gives us one more way of finding out what’s going wrong in both cancer and Alzheimer’s, and that could lead us to new ways to treat either condition,” she added.

Tags: health, alzheimers disease, features, cancer