title: Nutritional supplementation for Alzheimer's disease?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Evidence for the benefit of nutrition in Alzheimer's disease continues to accumulate. Many studies with individual vitamins or supplements show marginal, if any, benefit. However, new findings with combinatorial formulations demonstrate improvement in cognitive performance and behavioral difficulties that accompany Alzheimer's disease. Herein, we review some of the most recent clinical advances and summarize supportive preclinical studies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We present novel positive effects on Alzheimer's disease derived from diet, trace elements, vitamins and supplements. We discuss the inherent difficulty in conducting nutritional studies because of the variance in participants' nutritional history, versus pharmacological interventions in which participants are naive to the intervention. We examine the evidence that epigenetics play a role in Alzheimer's disease and how nutritional intervention can modify the key epigenetic events to maintain or improve cognitive performance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Overall consideration of the most recent collective evidence suggests that the optimal approach for Alzheimer's disease would seem to combine early, multicomponent nutritional approaches (a Mediterranean-style diet, multivitamins and key combinatorial supplements), along with lifestyle modifications such as social activity and mental and physical exercise, with ultimate addition of pharmacological agents when warranted.
authors.affiliation: aLaboratory for Neuroscience bDepartment of Biological Sciences, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts cFramingham State University, Framingham, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Shea
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Remington
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000178:diet therapy*; D000818:Animals; D019587:Dietary Supplements; D006801:Humans