Rural Residents More Likely to Get Alzheimer's

Another medical study is out knocking the rural life. After one last week said rural residents were more likely to be obese, we get one from the UK saying they're twice as likely to get Alzheimer's, too, report the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. Edinburgh University researchers came to the conclusion after looking at dozens of papers with medical data on more than 12,000 people around the world, including the US.

The next step is to figure out why. "We don't really know the mechanism," says one scientist. "It could be to do with access to health care, exposure to some unknown substance, socioeconomic factors, or a number of other factors." The correlation is worse for those who live their whole life in the country, rather than those who move there in later years. (More Alzheimer's disease stories.)