Revelations from the New England Centenarian Study: Research on the Oldest Old May Help Unravel the Mysteries of Alzheimer's and Other Dementias

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The study collected medical histories and reviewed medical records, and discovered that among those with dementia at ages 100 or older, the subjects still markedly delayed the onset of dementia relative to the average age of onset- particularly of late onset Alzheimer's Disease.

During the first year of my geriatrics fellowship, in 1991, I was assigned numerous patients-among them were two individuals who would change my life forever. Though I gradually became acquainted with the other residents who lived in the "independently functioning" residential section of Boston's Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for Aged, I had yet to meet this section's two centenarian patients who would so …