People who carry a genetic mutation associated with Alzheimer\u2019s disease may develop the disease three years earlier than expected, according to a new study from Keck Medicine of USC.<\/p>\n
Scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have mapped the effects of that genetic mutation, showing for the first time how the Alzheimer\u2019s risk factor affects the living human brain. <\/p>\n
‘Our lab studies the rate of brain tissue loss in elderly people, trying to discover factors that protect you as you age,’ said Paul M. Thompson, PhD, USC professor of neurology, psychiatry, engineering, radiology and ophthalmology and the study\u2019s principal investigator. ‘We have never seen such a dramatic effect as with this genetic variant. If you carry this genetic mutation, we\u2019ve found that there is this wildfire of tissue loss in the brain.’<\/p>\n
Healthy people typically lose less than 1 percent of their brain tissue a year, offset by normal tissue generation from mental stimulation, Thompson said. Symptoms of Alzheimer\u2019s begin to manifest when approximately 10 percent of the brain\u2019s tissue has eroded away.
\n‘This is the first study to use brain scans to show what this gene variant does, and it\u2019s very surprising,’ Thompson said. ‘This gene speeds up brain loss at a terrific pace. Carriers of this genetic mutation, who comprise about 1 percent of the population, lose about 3 percent of their brain tissue per year. This is a silent time bomb in 1 percent of the world.’<\/p>\n
Thompson and colleagues compared brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 478 adults (average age 76 years old) participating in the Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative over two years. The group included 283 men and 195 women from across North America; 100 participants had Alzheimer\u2019s disease, 221 had mild cognitive impairment and 157 were healthy elderly adults.<\/p>\n
Keck researchers found that mutation carriers lost 1.4 percent to 3.3 percent more of their brain tissue than non-carriers, and twice as fast. The loss appears to be concentrated in the brain\u2019s temporal lobe and hippocampus, areas that play important roles in memory. <\/p>\n
‘This TREM2 mutation appears to multiply the risk of Alzheimer\u2019s by three or four times, which is very useful information. Enrolling those people who carry the mutation in clinical trials for Alzheimer\u2019s treatments could help us reach quicker and more meaningful results,’ Thompson said.\nKeck School of Medicine<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who carry a genetic mutation associated with Alzheimer\u2019s disease may develop the disease three years earlier than expected, according to a new study from Keck Medicine of USC. Scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have mapped the effects of that genetic mutation, showing for the first time how the Alzheimer\u2019s risk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}