Alzheimer's disease: Potential preventive, non-invasive, intervention strategies in lowering the risk of cognitive decline - A review study

The number of elderly people nowadays is rapidly increasing, especially in the developed countries. This brings about serious problems such as occurrence of diseases connected with aging population. The most frequent aging disease seems to be Alzheimer's disease (AD). The purpose of this article is to briefly describe the individual phases of this disease with special focus on the preclinical stage of AD since in this phase people might be already affected by some brain changes but they are still mentally and physically healthy individuals. Thus, the main goal of this article is to explore the preventive, non-invasive, intervention strategies which can help people already in the preclinical period of AD to lower the risk of cognitive decline and in this way enable them to stay independent on the assistance of other people and constantly attempt to improve quality of their life even in the older age. Firstly, a method of literature review analyzing the data contained in the world's prestigious scientific database: Web of Science in the period of 1990-2014 is used. Secondly, a method of comparison of different research studies examining preventive, non-invasive, intervention strategies in lowering the risk of cognitive decline is applied. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Sp. z o.o. on behalf of Faculty of Health and Social Studies, University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice.