Patients with early Alzheimer's disease who exercised regularly saw less deterioration in the areas of the brain that control memory, according to a study released Sunday at a conference in Chicago.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies showed that exercise positively affected the hippocampus region of patients' brains, an area important for both memory and balance. In Alzheimer's, the hippocampus is one of the first parts of the brain to suffer damage.

Exercise and physical fitness have been shown to slow down age-related brain cell death in healthy older adults, and earlier this month a preliminary study was published showing that exercise may help slow brain shrinkage in people with early Alzheimer's disease.

Now, researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City have used MRI and other neuroimaging tools to analyze how exercise affects the brains of those with early Alzheimer's.

The study, released at the 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease (ICAD) in Chicago, found that patients with early Alzheimer's had a "significant relationship" between the size of key brain areas associated with memory and fitness, unlike healthy older adults.

Those patients with better fitness ratings had less brain tissue atrophy and those with worse fitness had more brain damage.

"This is the first study to get an inside look into specifically where these changes occur in the brain — we're able to locate the changes associated with fitness to the actual memory region, the hippocampus, which is a key area for Alzheimer's-related atrophy," said Robyn Honea, a lead investigator on the study.

"This suggests that maintaining cardiorespiratory fitness may positively modify Alzheimer's-related brain atrophy."

The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging and National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Dementia patients also aided by exercise

Another report from ICAD 2008 showed that a 12-month home-based exercise program reduced falls and improved balance in patients with dementia.

According to researchers from Western Medicine, a consultant physician service provider for Hollywood Hospital in Nedlands, Western Australia, people suffering from dementia fall up to three times more than those who have no cognitive impairment.

"Falls have a negative impact on a person's quality of life, often resulting in nursing home placement, increased mortality and significant costs to the community," said Megan Wraith, a speech pathologist at Western Medicine and a researcher on the study. "Targeting this high-risk group may be a relatively cost effective way of having a significant impact on the overall rate of falling in the elderly."

The study was funded by the Sir Charles Gairdner Research Foundation and Hollywood Private Hospital Research Foundation.