Eating fish may limit the risk of having a stroke or demonstrating memory loss in old age, it has been asserted.
In news that may be of interest to people working with patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a study published in the August 5th issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, found that consuming tuna and other types of seafood may aid in lowering the potential for cognitive decline.
Researchers examined 3,660 people aged over 65 for the project, conducting brain scans in order to detect small lesions or silent infarcts in the organ that could cause a loss of cognitive function.
Five years later, scans were performed on 2,313 of the participants and those partaking in the study were asked to fill out a questionnaire on the amount of fish they ate.
Seafood that was high in omega-3 fatty acids was found to have reduced the risk of developing such conditions by as much as 26 per cent in the people who had consumed the foodstuffs more than three times a week.
Jyrki Virtanen from the University of Kuopio in Finland said: "This is one of the only studies that looks at fish’s effect on silent brain infarcts in healthy, older people."