Ginkgo supplements were no better than a placebo for preventing dementia, according to the study, which was sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the NationalInstitute on Agingof the National Institutes of Health.
Since 1995, Dr. Ryff and her Wisconsin team have been studying some 7, 000 individuals and examining factors that influence health and well-being from middle age through old age in a study called MIDUS, or the Mid-Life in the U.S. National Study of Americans, funded by the NationalInstitute on Aging.
But there is a genetic mutation that nearly always predicts early onset Alzheimer's, a rare version of the disease that develops in people ages 30 to 60, according to the NationalInstitute on Aging.