NEW YORK—Patients with early Alzheimer’s disease who exercised regularly saw less deterioration in the areas of the brain that control memory, according to a study released Sunday at the 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Chicago.

MRI studies showed exercise positively affected the hippocampus region of patients’ brains, an area that is important for memory and balance. In Alzheimer’s, the hippocampus is one of the first parts of the brain to suffer damage.

Exercise and physical fitness have been shown to slow down age-related brain cell death in healthy older adults, and earlier this month a preliminary study was published showing that exercise may help slow brain shrinkage in people with early Alzheimer’s disease. Now, researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., have used MRI and other neuroimaging tools to analyze how exercise affects the brains of those with early Alzheimer’s. The researchers found that patients with early Alzheimer’s had a “significant relationship” between the size of key brain areas associated with memory and fitness, unlike healthy older adults. Those patients with better fitness ratings had less brain tissue atrophy and those with worse fitness had more brain damage.