According to a recent Harvard report, 400 million people across the world are affected in some way by Alzheimer’s disease, from which many of those people will go on to develop dementia.

This condition leads to a progressive decline of the brain, with sufferers experiencing memory loss, confusion and disorientation, and eventually struggles with language, mood, and behavior.

It’s a condition that can be distressing for the sufferer, as well as for the people around them, and thus has been the subject of many studies, as researchers around the globe race to find not only a cure, but a clear cause of this condition.

And in a striking leap forward for treatment prospects, a Harvard Medical School team may have just found an important clue that will aid prevention, as well as cure – meaning that more and more people around the world can live healthy, fulfilling lives well into their old age.

Published in the journal Nature, their study of lithium levels in the brain has discovered something incredible: lithium is a naturally occurring mineral in the brain that helps to maintain its cells and function, even throughout the aging process.

Moreover, they discovered that a drop in lithium levels in the brain could be a key early indicator of Alzheimer’s.

Not only did the research team discover, in the study of the brains of people who had left their bodies to science, that lithium levels were consistently diminished in those who had died suffering either with Alzheimer’s or other memory problems, whilst they were consistently high still for those who had died with normal cognitive function; this also ratified previous claims that suggested that regions in which lithium is present in drinking water have lower dementia levels amongst their citizens.

Moreover, the researchers went on to discover that, in studies on mice, restricting lithium in their diet effectively caused Alzheimer’s-like brain activity – and pivotally, feeding these mice a high-lithium diet replenished this brain activity, potentially suggesting that lithium could be used to treat Alzheimer’s, as Harvard Medical School’s Bruce Yankner explained in the report:

“Lithium turns out to be like other nutrients we get from the environment, such as iron and vitamin C. It’s the first time anyone’s shown that lithium exists at a natural level that’s biologically meaningful without giving it as a drug. What impresses me the most about lithium is the widespread effect it has on the various manifestations of Alzheimer’s. I really have not seen anything quite like it all my years of working on this disease.”

This hopeful advance does come with a caveat though: before certain conclusions can be drawn, trials need to be undertaken on living human patients – though the researchers hope at the very least that the monitoring of lithium levels could be relied on as a screening technique for Alzheimer’s in its very early stages.

Lithium treatment, on the other hand, needs to proceed with caution, since a high dose of the mineral can be toxic for older people – despite the fact that some lithium compounds are widely used to treat mental health conditions like bipolar disorder and depression. Thus, the researchers warn, nobody should self-medicate with lithium.

In the study, however, the researchers found that when treated with lithium orotate (which delivers lithium at a much lower dose), mice lived full and healthy lives since the level of lithium merely replicates that which occurs naturally in a healthy brain. As Yankner continued, this is heartening news not only for the researchers but for those suffering from Alzheimers, and those who may come to suffer in the future:

“The idea that lithium deficiency could be a cause of Alzheimer’s disease is new and suggests a different therapeutic approach. One of the most galvanizing findings for us was that there were profound effects at this exquisitely low dose. My hope is that lithium will do something more fundamental than anti-amyloid or anti-tau therapies, not just lessening but reversing cognitive decline and improving patients’ lives.”

And if future clinical trials are successful, this discovery may help us live long and healthy lives, free from the anxieties surrounding dementia.

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