Children of mothers with Alzheimer’s disease have a higher risk of developing the disease

Regardless of race, it is known that Women are about twice as likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease than men. The difference is mainly due to the fact that women live longer. In only 1% or less of cases of Alzheimer’s disease so-called “familial” Alzheimer’s disease, The causes can be explained solely by genetic or hereditary factors.. It is now known that genetically determined forms are associated with a mutation in one of three possible identified genes (apolipoprotein E-APOE e2, e3 and e4). The descendants of these people have a 50% chance of developing the disease.

A new study conducted researchers from Mass General Brigham (USA) suggests that whether a person inherits disease risk from their mother or father influences the risk of biological changes in the brain that lead to disease. When assessing 4400 adults without cognitive problems aged 65 to 85 years, The team, also consisting of scientists from Vanderbilt and Stanford universities (USA), found that those with a maternal or both parental history of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) had increased brain amyloid.

Amyloid is a protein that is found in our body, but in Alzheimer’s disease clumps together and forms lumps of varying sizes, which then develop into plaques in the brain.. It is believed that amyloid It is toxic to brain cells. Although What size cluster causes these cells to die is still being studied.

“Our study showed that “If participants had a maternal family history, higher levels of amyloid were observed.”– lead author Hyun-Sik Yang, a neuroscientist at Mass General Brigham and a behavioral neuroscientist in the Department of Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences, emphasizes in an article published in the journal. Jama Neurology.

Previous small studies have examined the role of family history in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Some of these studies have shown that maternal history presented a higher riskbut the group wanted to return to study the issue with cognitively normal participants and access a wider range of clinical trial data.

To this end, the team analyzed the family histories of healthy older adults, asking them about the occurrence of symptoms of memory loss in their parents and whether their parents had ever been formally diagnosed or autopsy confirmed that they had Alzheimer’s disease. “Some people choose not to get a formal diagnosis and attribute memory loss to age, so we focus on the phenotype of memory loss and dementia,” Yang explains, according to Ep.

The researchers then compared these responses and They measured the participants’ amyloid levels. They found that maternal memory impairment at any age and paternal early memory impairment were associated with higher amyloid levels. The researchers found that having late-onset memory impairment in the father alone was not associated with higher amyloid levels.

“If your father had early symptoms, it is associated with elevated levels of the hormone in the offspring,” said Mabel Seto, first author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Brigham’s Department of Neurology. “However, It doesn’t matter when your mother started having symptoms; “If you’ve had them, it’s associated with elevated amyloid levels.”

Seto is working on other projects related to sex differences in neuroscience. So, he comments that The study’s findings are exciting because Alzheimer’s disease is more common in women. “From a genetic point of view, it’s really interesting to see how one sex contributes something that the other sex does not.” Seto – highlights.

Yang insists that a limitation of the study is that some of the participants’ parents died young, before they developed symptoms of cognitive decline. In addition, social factors such as access to resources and education could also influence when someone recognized cognitive impairment and whether they were ever formally diagnosed. So the next steps are expand the study look at other groups and examine how parental history influences cognitive decline and amyloid accumulation over time, and why mother’s DNA plays a key role.