These surprising professions have the lowest rate of Alzheimer’s disease deaths
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Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia and it is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Taxi and ambulance drivers were found to have the lowest proportion of deaths of more than 440 occupations that were considered in a new observation-based study from Massachusetts physicians.
![[Yellow New York City cabs line up along a New York curb. Researchers found just 171 of 16,658 taxi drivers died from Alzheimer’s]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/13/21/iStock-157480155.jpg)
While the study’s findings cannot confirm a direct link between the professions and reduced risk, its researchers said they raise the possibility that memory-intensive driving occupations could be associated with some protection. “We view these findings not as conclusive, but as hypothesis-generating,” they said, noting that no resolute conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.
The jobs require frequent spatial and navigational processing: the ability to sense and incorporate information about the location of objects around them. Although, the trend was not seen in other related jobs, like driving a bus or piloting an aircraft. It was also not seen in other forms of dementia, which suggests changes in the hippocampus region of the brain — which is used for spatial memory and navigation — may account for the reduction.
The hippocampus, located deep within the brain, has been shown to be enhanced in London taxi drivers compared to the general population. The region is also one of the parts of the brain involved in 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.
