Here are some highlights from the world’s largest Alzheimer’s meeting in Philly last week

Philadelphia’s leading Alzheimer’s and dementia researchers took center stage at an international conference hosted at the Pennsylvania Convention Center last week.

The international meeting of the Alzheimer’s Association, the world’s largest gathering of researchers and clinicians focused on Alzheimer’s and dementia, made headlines for presentations about emerging insights into and treatment options for a debilitating memory disease that is still not well understood.

Highlights included a new blood test that can diagnose patients with Alzheimer’s better than clinicians, and reporting that people exposed to wildfires and those who regularly ate processed red meats (such as hot dogs, bacon, and sausage) were more likely to develop dementia.

Here are some other noteworthy findings presented by Philadelphia-based researchers.

People who attend religious services are more likely to live longer and have better mental health, but less is known about the effect of a spiritual practice on brain health, according to Katherine Britt, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

To investigate, Britt and her team reviewed data from more than 150 older adults (average age 74) in the Philadelphia area. The researchers found that any major changes in spiritual activity — either attending services more or less frequently — were linked to lower cognitive health.

Specifically, they saw that older adults who said they had changed how often they attend religious services in the past year were more likely to have worse cognitive scores. But these results were seen only in Black study participants, not white.

What might underlie these racial differences? “I don’t think we know the answer to that yet,” said Britt. But over and over, she sees the same result: “In all my work, I keep finding associations: Different dimensions of religion or spirituality are associated with better cognitive health and memory.”

It’s possible that people who stopped going to services may have been experiencing illnesses that made it hard for them to attend, she noted. But for those who can attend, religious services offer many positive benefits for older adults, such as social interaction and resources, Britt said.

What’s more, spirituality can give people a sense of meaning and purpose, and is often associated with positive thinking, such as hope and optimism for the future, all of which could bode well for the brain, Britt added.

Traditional cognitive tests — for instance, listening to a list of random words and repeating them back — are less than ideal for diagnosing dementia. They often don’t capture real-life skills, and, like many standardized tests, white people tend to perform better than Black people. These differences are not based in biology, and have instead been attributed to social disparities, such as in education.

So researchers are exploring other, better ways to measure brain health. In a version of a testing approach pioneered at MossRehab, researchers at Temple University asked 100 older adults living in the Philly area to try traditional cognitive testing, then do something very different: Make breakfast and lunch using everyday objects such as bread, a toaster, and jelly.

The researchers filmed and timed participants, and noted any potential errors, such as reaching for the wrong object, or being inefficient by moving items around unnecessarily.

They found that Black participants scored worse than white participants in traditional cognitive tests, but performed equally well in many of the measures related to making a meal.

The findings suggest that testing that measures skills people perform in their everyday lives could provide accurate measures of brain health, especially among Black patients. Study author Tania Giovannetti, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple, said she and her team are now trying to develop a digital version of the meal-making task for the clinic, where patients move simulated food items around on a touchscreen. “We call that our virtual kitchen,” she said.

By the time most older adults have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia, they have other health conditions, as well.

To determine which conditions coexist most frequently with cognitive decline, researchers from Drexel University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital scanned data from nearly 35,000 people ages 65 and older, looking for people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and related dementias. They noted whether they also had 12 other chronic conditions, including high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, chronic kidney disease, and arthritis.

The researchers found that people with Alzheimer’s and dementia were more likely to have at least four other health conditions than those who had not been diagnosed with cognitive decline. The conditions most associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia were stroke, depression, and other mental health conditions.

Going outside for physical activity is good for older adults, but just how many are doing it is unclear.

A study of more than 3,000 older adults by Drexel researchers found that, relative to people who go outside everyday, people who infrequently spend time outdoors were more likely to show signs of dementia, or live in neighborhoods that feel unsafe.

The findings suggest that older adults’ neighborhoods could make it harder for them to engage in healthy behaviors such as going outside, the researchers note.