Mirroring findings in younger adults, a new study of adults 75 years and older at baseline suggests that drinking light to moderate amounts of alcohol may help protect against the development of dementia.

“There is strong evidence from previous longitudinal studies that [drinking] a small amount of alcohol is associated with lower incidence of overall dementia and Alzheimer dementia,” Professor Siegfried Weyerer, PhD, from the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, said.

“Unique in our study,” he told Medscape Medical News, “is that this result was also found among a large population [75 years and older at baseline] where the mean age was, at 80.2 years, much higher than that in previous studies.”

Read more: http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/738805?src=cmemp