People with Alzheimer's disease may want to reconsider going under anesthetic unless absolutely necessary, a new animal study suggests.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City found that a protein associated with Alzheimer's — called "tau" — builds up in brain cells more quickly when body temperatures fall, such as when a patient is anesthetized or experiences hypothermia.

The researchers say their finding should be of concern to surgeons and dentists who anesthetize patients with Alzheimer's or patients at increased risk for the disease.

"We hope that this research will initiate an interest in taking precautions to limit the impact of anesthesia on the disease," one of the study's authors, assistant professor of pathology Emmanuel Planel, said in a release.

The study was published online Wednesday in The FASEB Journal.

Planel and his colleagues examined two groups of mice genetically engineered to make the abnormal tau protein that accumulates in Alzheimer's patients.

One group was anesthetized, and one group was not.

A week after anesthesia, the two groups were compared for the amount of tau protein clumps in their brain cells.

The mice that were anesthetized had more of these clumps than the group that was not anesthetized. Furthermore, in mice showing advanced signs of the disease, the build up of tau proteins occurred faster than in those in the early stages.