A drink a day may keep dementia away it seems.

In a study presented at the Alzheimer’s Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers followed 3,069 people 75 and older for six years. At the start of the study, 482 of them had all been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment.

The study showed that people who drank one to two alcoholic drinks a day were 37% less likely to develop dementia than those who abstained from it. Also to note: it didn’t matter whether the patient chose beer, wine or hard liquor, the results were still the same.

Now before you rush out to find the nearest bottle of wine, the reduction in risk is very similar to that associated with exercising three times a week or more, Sink says. So think twice before changing your drinking habits.

Among people who had mild cognitive impairment at the start of the study, those who drank more than two drinks a day were nearly twice as likely to develop dementia, compared with nondrinkers.

The Scientists took into account the test patient’s education, history of depression and smoking as well as other factors that can affect the risk of forming dementia.

Sink says no one should start imbibing in an effort to ward off dementia. “But older adults who are already drinking moderately don’t necessarily need to cut back if they’re cognitively normal,” she says.

The study doesn’t prove cause and effect. It could be alcohol itself or some other lifestyle factor shared by moderate drinkers that is responsible for the protective effect, Sink says.

But other research has suggested moderate drinking might protect against dementia by increasing levels of good cholesterol and preventing blood platelets from sticking together. It may also stimulate the release of acetylcholine, a chemical that’s important for memory, Sink says.

So why didn’t it help people with mild cognitive impairment? Sink says any benefits from alcohol may not have been strong enough to slow the degenerative disease process that’s already kicked in with people who have mild cognitive impairment.

“Moderate drinking may be protective for healthy adults, but once there are memory problems, it may be very important to curtail that,” says Maria Carrillo, PhD, director of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association.

In a recently released study, Scientists from the University of Kiel, Germany have found a genetic link between dental disease and coronary heart disease (CHD).

Dr Arne Schaefer, of the Institute for Clinical Molecular Biology at the University of Kiel, and colleagues were responsible for this revolutionary breakthrough. Schaefer presented their findings to the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in Vienna on Monday 25 May.

“We found that the genetic risk variant is located in a genetic region that codes for an antisense DNA called ANRIL”, said Dr. Schaefer, “and that it is identical for both diseases.”

“We studied a genetic locus on chromosome 9p21.3 that had previously been identified to be associated with myocardial infarction, in a group of 151 patients suffering from the most aggressive, early-onset forms of periodontitis, and a group of 1097 CHD patients who had already had a heart attack,” he said.

Doctors have known for a long time that periodontitis and coronary heart disease frequently go together, however this is the first time someone has presented evidence supporting the idea that they both come from the same causes.

Gum disease – or periodontitis – can be a path into the bloodstream for approximately 700 cases of bacteria found in the mouth, leading to the more serious problem of coronary heart disease.

Coronary heart disease is the world leading cause of death, and periodontitis, which leads to the connective tissue and the bone support of teeth, is the primary cause of tooth loss in adults over the age of 40. The tooth disease affects 90 percent of people over 60 years old.