Identifying Alzheimer's genes
In a study led by The Australian National University (ANU), scientists have identified a network of nine genes that play a key role in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer's disease affects up to 35 million people around the world and is predicted to affect one in 85 people globally by 2050. But while the US National Institutes of Health has put $170 million towards developing treatments for Alzheimer's, the ANU-led research team is focusing on delaying its onset.
“I think it will be more successful to delay the onset of the disease than to prevent it completely," said lead researcher Associate Professor Mauricio Arcos-Burgos, from The John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at ANU.
Associate Professor Arcos-Burgos and his team studied a family of 5000 people in Colombia who are afflicted by a type of hereditary Alzheimer's. They are said to be a unique resource in the fight against the disease because they are such a large, close-knit family and live in a specific region in the western mountains of Colombia.
The team studied the variable age of onset of dementia in this family, rather than trying to treat symptoms which develop later in life, even though changes in the brain can be observed in individuals before the age of 20. The team were able to discount environmental factors and trace the family's genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's disease back to a founder mutation in one individual who came to the region about 500 years ago.
The team was additionally able to isolate the nine genes involved in Alzheimer's, some of which delay the onset by up to 17 years, while others advance its progress. The results of their study have been published in the journal Molecular Biology and could help scientists develop new treatments to delay the onset of the disease.
“If you can work out how to decelerate the disease, then you can have a profound impact," Associate Professor Arcos-Burgos said.
“Even if we delay the onset by on average one year, that will mean nine million fewer people have the disease in 2050."
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