Belgian clinical research uncovers groundbreaking insights in Alzheimer’s disease
Rarely Alzheimer’s disease results from a genetic mutation and is inherited from one generation to the next. It can however hit much earlier in life and affect people in their forties or fifties and earlier.
Prof. Lucía Chávez-Gutiérrez of the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research and her team uncovered a direct relationship between changes in the amyloid-beta fragments that accumulate in the brain tissue of Alzheimer’s patients, and the age at which symptoms first arise. With these new insights, the team hopes to predict and eventually delay the disease.
When do Alzheimer’s symptoms first appear?
When not inherited, the Alzheimer’s disease often starts to manifest after the age of 65. In rare cases, however, Alzheimer’s can be genetically inherited. Research has already shown close to 400 different mutations in families affected with early onset Alzheimer’s around the globe.
“The age at which clinical symptoms first manifest is relatively consistent within families and between carriers of the same mutations, but differs markedly between mutations,” explains prof. Lucía Chávez-Gutiérrez. “It is important to understand the mechanisms by which some mutations cause symptoms to manifest decades earlier than others. Not only because of the practical importance for families affected by familial Alzheimer’s, but also to understand how we could conceive to halt or at least delay disease,” she concludes.
(AS)
MRI image of a healthy brain (L) and an Alzheimer's brain ©Belga Photo - Dr. Timothy Rittman