Nun Study Sheds Light on Alzheimer’s
Sister Mary Alphonsine DeJulio and Sister Antoine Daniel Knipfling of the School Sisters of Notre Dame laugh at the girlish enthusiasm that filled the autobiographies they wrote more than 70 years ago.
In her application to join the order in 1928, Sister Alphonsine, now 91, wrote with reverence about the importance of rules that govern life in a convent.
“Bunk,” she now says. Sister Alphonsine, who lives at the order’s retirement home, is one of 678 nuns from the order’s seven convents who have agreed to participate in a landmark study of Alzheimer’s disease.
Sister Antoine, 89, rewrote her own autobiography and trimmed some of the more hyperbolic language that marked her teenage literary effort.
“I wrote that I came from an exceedingly happy family,” Sister Antoine recalls, bemused by her use of such gushing language. “It was a warm and loving family.”
In one of the more intriguing findings of the aptly named Nun Study, the vibrancy and complexity of the prose in autobiographies of convent applicants turned out be one of the best predictors of whether they would develop Alzheimer’s. Nuns who wrote sentences thick with ideas were less likely to develop dementia than those whose autobiographies showed a paucity of themes.
“We’ve just barely scratched the surface,” says David Snowden, the University of Kentucky researcher who launched the Nun Study in 1986. “The study is a treasury of information. It offers clues about how we can have a better quality of life as we age.”
Snowden’s new book, “Aging With Grace,” chronicles his experience studying the nuns, who agreed to take mental tests, fill out questionnaires and donate their brains after they die to be examined for the telltale plaque sand tangles that are the definitive diagnosis for Alzheimer’s disease.
“When we die our souls will go to heaven, but our brains will go to Kentucky,” is a common joke among the nuns in the study, says Sister Alphonsine.
Snowden says the nuns were ideal subjects for the long-term comparative study, because they shared such similar life experiences, without confounding variables such as income, pregnancy or heavy smoking and drinking. One of the chief messages of the book is that the upbeat attitudes and mentally active lifestyles of nuns such as Sister Alphonsine and Sister Antoine may offer protection against the onset of the implacable and still mysterious dementia.
Alzheimer’s disease remains a mystery. Scientists know that people with variations of some genes will inevitably develop early-onset Alzheimer’s, which typically afflicts people in their 50s. The cause of late-onset Alzheimer’s, which accounts for more than 90% of the estimated 4 million Alzheimer’s cases in the United States, is more difficult to explain.
Scientists so far have found variants of only one gene, APOE, that is known to influence the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s. Yet even people who possess two copies of APOE4, the most undesirable form of the gene variant, don’t always develop Alzheimer’s. So scientists now believe a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental triggers causes Alzheimer’s disease.
Snowden’s study suggests strokes and head trauma may be two of those environmental triggers.
Folic acid may offer some protection.
One of the most striking findings from the ongoing Nun Study is that those nuns who went to college, who read often, do puzzles and express positive outlooks on life are more likely to fend off the disease--or at least its symptoms. An autopsy on one nun showed that her brain was riddled with Alzheimer’s plaques, yet she remained mentally active and showed no signs of dementia before her death from a heart attack, Snowden says.
The sisters tend to develop Alzheimer’s at about the same rate as the national average, says Sister Helen Reed, a liaison to the study.
In an observation that he acknowledges is more intuition than science, Snowden says he believes that the sense of community shared by some of the sisters also helps ward off Alzheimer’s.
Sister Alphonsine and Sister Antoine--both college graduates and avid readers who have worked as educators--agree. “We have a large amount of support, as well as the respect and love we received from one another,” Sister Antoine says.
“And,” adds Sister Alphonsine, “a sense of humor.” Sister Alphonsine says she has not rewritten her autobiography of 70 years ago, but “Top This” would be the working title. And, like Sister Antoine, she would revise her autobiography, because decades of work for the order in places as diverse as Puerto Rico, Rome and Trumbull, Conn., have changed her perspective about life.
“I hope it would change,” she says. “My faith has grown. And if your faith is not growing, it is diminished.” Despite the insights into Alzheimer’s provided by the Nun Study, Sister Alphonsine says, it remains a mystery why she has been spared the ravages of Alzheimer’s that have claimed some other nuns in the order.
“Why don’t I have Alzheimer’s?” she said. “I do not know. It’s a blessing of the Lord.”
