Women with Greater Language Skills in their Twenties Less Likely to Develop Alzheimer’s

By Rachel Stockton

As part of the ongoing Nun Study, researchers have further confirmed that women who have greater language skills when they are in their 20’s are significantly less likely to develop Alzheimer’s.

Researchers first discovered the link between language skill and Alzheimer’s in 1996. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that after analyzing essays written by the nuns when they first entered the convent, those who wrote sentences with complex ideas were more likely to avoid dementia than those who wrote simple sentences expressing simple ideas (New York Times).

The current study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University, not only confirms the 1996 report, it delves into the physiology of the language link.  

The nuns were divided into two groups; one was made up of women who had memory loss along with the plaques and tangles indicative of dementia. The second group was made of nuns who had no memory loss, despite the fact that they had the same level of plaques and tangles. This means that although the women who had greater language acuity displayed a certain level of Alzheimer’s disease pathology, there was some sort of protective mechanism in place that prevented them from actually developing the disease.

What exactly is that protective mechanism? A 2008 study led by Norman Relkin, associate professor of clinical neurology and neuroscience at New York Presbyterian Hospital may have partially answered that question. He and his team discovered that a certain antibody, which is non-existent in Alzheimer’s patients, may hold the key in developing an immunological therapy for the disease. This antibody targets the protein fragment that attaches itself in clumps among the brain plaques of Alzheimer’s patients, blocking signaling pathways and ultimately killing cells (US News and World Report).