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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.
Article Source: Reuters Health
Article Author: N/A
Net Reference 89
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