The two professions with the lowest Alzheimer’s death rates may be surprising.
A new observation-based study by Massachusetts doctors found that taxi drivers and ambulance drivers had the lowest rates of fatalities among more than 440 occupations.
Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia that affects memory, thinking and behavior. It affects millions of Americans and is one of the top ten causes of death in the United States.
While the study’s results cannot confirm a direct link between these occupations and reduced risk, the researchers said they raise the possibility that memory-intensive driving occupations may be associated with some protection.
“We do not view these findings as conclusive but rather hypothesis-generating,” they said. They noted that no firm conclusions could be drawn about cause and effect.
A male ambulance driver drives through a residential area. A new study has found that ambulance and taxi drivers have the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s deaths compared with hundreds of other occupations (Getty Images/iStock)
The research was published on Monday in the journal’s special Christmas issue british medical journal.
These tasks require frequent spatial and navigational processing: the ability to perceive and integrate information about the location of surrounding objects.
However, this trend does not appear in other related jobs, such as driving a bus or flying an airplane. This has not been found in other forms of dementia, suggesting that changes in the brain’s hippocampus region (used for spatial memory and navigation) may be responsible for the reduction.
The hippocampus, located deep in the brain, has been shown to be enhanced in London taxi drivers compared to the general population.
This area is also one of the parts of the brain linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
The study’s authors examined death certificates for adults between January 2020 and the last day of December 2022.
New York City yellow cabs line up along the New York curb. Researchers found only 171 of 16,658 taxi drivers died from Alzheimer’s disease (Getty Images/iStock)
Of the 16,658 taxi drivers, only 171 died from Alzheimer’s disease. Of the 1,348 ambulance drivers, 10 died from the disease.
Among the general population, the proportion of Alzheimer’s deaths was 1.69%, compared with 1.03% for taxi drivers and 0.91% for ambulance drivers.
The authors acknowledged limitations, including that people at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s may be less likely to pursue a career in driving. However, they said this was unlikely because symptoms of the disease usually appear after working age.
“Further research is needed to definitively conclude whether the spatial cognitive work required in these occupations affects the risk of death from Alzheimer’s disease and whether any cognitive activity has a potential preventive effect,” they said.
