Cancer Tied to Reduced Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

Observational evidence for the connection is solidifying, and some clues are emerging about the mechanisms that may explain it.

Written byDan Robitzski

| 8 min read

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In recent years, scientists around the world have been probing an unexpected trend: The risk of developing cancer seems to have an inverse relationship with the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Research published earlier this year in Brain, in which researchers autopsied study subjects to verify whether they had in fact died with Alzheimer’s disease, further solidifies the hypothesis, experts tell The Scientist.

Thanks to those data, which showed participants with cancer had fewer hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains as well as a reduced likelihood of neurodegenerative symptoms during their lifetimes, lead study author Erin Abner, a University of Kentucky epidemiologist and aging researcher and her team were able to offer the clearest picture yet of a molecular mechanism that seems to link the two diseases.

“The connection is becoming more and more apparent,” New York University cancer researcher Eva Hernando-Monge, who didn’t work on the study, tells ...

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Meet the Author

Dan Robitzski
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Dan is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles who joined The Scientist as a reporter and editor in 2021. Ironically, Dan’s undergraduate degree and brief career in neuroscience inspired him to write about research rather than conduct it, culminating in him earning a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University in 2017. In 2018, an Undark feature Dan and colleagues began at NYU on a questionable drug approval decision at the FDA won first place in the student category of the Association of Health Care Journalists' Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. Now, Dan writes and edits stories on all aspects of the life sciences for the online news desk, and he oversees the “The Literature” and “Modus Operandi” sections of the monthly TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. Read more of his work at danrobitzski.com.
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