THERAPEUTIC AND PREVENTIVE IMPACT OF NUTRITIONAL LIPIDS ON NEURONAL AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE IN AGING, ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE AND VASCULAR DEMENTIA

Major objective: It is our aim to develop a lipid based diet that is able to delay or prevent onset of Alzheimer’s disease and related diseases and has a stabilizing effect on cognitive performance in aging. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there is a large overlap between risk factor of these three diseases. Importantly, there is equally strong evidence that prevention and treatment of these diseases can be efficiently addresses - especially in their first and their priclinical stages - by closely related or identical bio-molecules. Predominantly these molecules appear to belong to the class of lipids which are part of the human diet. However, very often they are consumed in far lesser than recommended amounts. Bearing in mind that all of these diseases have a long pre-clinical phase in which the disease remains undetected specifically designed nutrition may be requirred for effective prevention or for those who already progressed into the first clinical stage of the disease. Moreover, frequently the within the elderly population pathological changes by two or all of these diseases occur in combination thus targeting only one would be insufficient. Taking these aspects into consideration, dietary supplementation, composed to maximize benefit for all three of these in the elderly common diseases, appears to be the most suitable approach to provide a general health perspective improvement for this age group in the EU population.