Does driving prevent dementia?

The 2 minute update looks at a study evaluating deaths involving Alzheimer dementia based on occupation. Do some occupations have lower rates of Alzheimer dementia?

This is a US database review including almost 9 million deaths in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

To be included, the person’s occupation had to be listed. In total, 443 occupations were included.

Overall, 3.9% of people had Alzheimer dementia listed as a contributing cause of death. But the rates were much lower for ambulance drivers at 0.74% and for taxi drivers at 1.03%. When the researchers specifically compared those groups to chief executives, the adjusted odds ratio for having Alzheimer’s contributing to death was only 0.50 for ambulance drivers and 0.56 for taxi drivers. Those differences are statistically significant.

We already know that the hippocampus is one of the first brain regions to atrophy in Alzheimer dementia. Interestingly, the hippocampus has been shown to be enhanced in taxi drivers. Perhaps frequently processing navigational and spatial variables protects against Alzheimer dementia by activating the hippocampus. We already know that exercise activates the hippocampus, and that exercise is also associated with lower rates of Alzheimer dementia.

But now we primarily use GPS for assistance with navigation. Is that going to lead to less activation of the hippocampus? And could we develop “mental exercise” programs to specifically activate the hippocampus, perhaps through virtual reality applications? Unfortunately, it appears that dementia rates are going to skyrocket in coming years, so developing methods to prevent it could be very beneficial.

Reference: Patel et al. Alzheimer’s disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers: population based cross sectional study. BMJ 2024;387:e082194