Scientists are digging into why a few people escape the rarest form of Alzheimer's, which is inherited and strikes young.
ST. LOUIS — Doug Whitney inherited the same gene mutation that gave Alzheimer’s disease to his mother, brother and generations of other relatives by the unusually young age of 50.So did a woman in Colombia who dodged her own family’s similar Alzheimer’s destiny for nearly three decades.
People are also reading… “We are just learning about this approach to the disease,” said neuropsychologist Yakeel Quiroz of Massachusetts General Hospital, who helped study the Colombian woman. “One person can actually change the world — as in her case, how much we have learned from her.” “I guess that made me pretty special. And they started poking and prodding and doing extra testing on me,” the Port Orchard, Washington, man said. “I told them, you know, I’m here for whatever you need.”
Less than 1% of Alzheimer’s is caused by inheriting a single copy of a particular mutated gene. Children of an affected parent have a 50-50 chance of inheriting the family Alzheimer’s gene. If they do, they’re almost guaranteed to get sick at about the same age as their parent did. “We went through about 10 years when the kids would call home their first question was, ‘How’s Dad?’” his wife Ione Whitney recalled. “By the time he turned 60 we kind of went, wow, we beat the coin toss.”
Her brain was jampacked with Alzheimer’s trademark amyloid plaques. But researchers found very little tau — and weirdly, it wasn’t in the brain’s memory hub but in a very different region. “We still have more work to do, but we’re getting closer to understanding the mechanism,” Quiroz said. In St. Louis, researchers are checking out another clue: Maybe something special about Whitney’s immune system is protecting his brain.
Living with the uncertainty is tough, and he sometimes has nightmares about Alzheimer’s. He tries to follow what he now knows was his parents’ mantra: “Make the best of life till 50 and anything after that is a bonus.” This aging of the population will have far-reaching economic and social ramifications, especially when it comes to healthcare needs. Specifically, diseases that typically affect the elderly will become more prevalent in the U.S. One of the most common illnesses among people over the age of 65 is Alzheimer’s disease.
Interestingly, about two-thirds of Americans with Alzheimer’s are women. While there is no definitive explanation for the gender discrepancy, some medical experts postulate that reasons might include women’s higher life expectancy. Additionally, the fact that more men are likely to die from other causes, such as heart disease, is also considered. In 2017, 84,079 women and 37,325 men died as a result of Alzheimer’s.
Although there is no cure for Alzheimer’s, advances in modern medicine may aid the severity of the condition. The use of biomarkers allows doctors to detect the disease earlier and intervene by treating the symptoms. Research from Precision Health Economics on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Association has estimated that early detection could save America nearly $8 trillion when treating people who will develop the disease.
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