Anti-aging medicine has been dealt a boost by news of a new study linking high Ibuprofen use to a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Carrying out the longest study of its kind, a team at the Boston University School of Medicine found that people who used Ibuprofen for more than five years lowered their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease by 40 per cent.

The study involved 49,349 Americans age 55 and older who had developed Alzheimer's, as well as 196,850 of the same age without dementia,
collating over five years of data and studying the use of various non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

In addition to detecting lower Alzheimer's rates the longer Ibuprofen is taken, people using certain types of NSAIDs for periods longer than five years were also shown to reduce their chances of developing Alzheimer's by 25 per cent.

Study author Steven Vlad said: "These results suggest that the effect may be due to specific NSAIDs rather than all NSAIDs as a class.

"Some of these medications taken long term decrease the risk of Alzheimer's disease, but it's very dependent on the exact drugs used. It doesn't appear that all NSAIDs decrease the risk at the same rate."

He added that Ibuprofen's successful results may be due to the fact that it is the most commonly used of the drugs.