The Onset of Alzheimer's Disease: The Importance of Family History

A study published in JAMA Neurology indicates that the closer a person gets to the age at which their parent exhibited the first symptoms of Alzheimer's, the more likely they are to have amyloid plaques in their brain, reports ScienceDaily . The researchers examined a cohort of 101 people and determined that a 60-year-old whose mother developed Alzheimer's at age 63 would be more likely to have amyloid plaques in their brain than a 70-year-old whose mother developed the disease at 85. "Upon examining changes in the amyloid biomarker in the cerebrospinal fluid samples from our subjects, we noticed that this link between parental age and amyloid deposits is stronger in women than in men," says McGill University Professor Sylvia Villeneuve. "The link is also stronger in carriers of the ApoE4 gene, the so-called 'Alzheimer's gene.'" The study results were successfully replicated in two independent groups: one of 128 individuals from a University of Washington-St. Louis cohort, and another of 135 individuals from a University of Wisconsin-Madison cohort. In addition, the team reproduced their results with an imaging method that allows visualization of amyloid plaques in the brains of living persons. The study also is clearing a way for the development of more affordable techniques for the early identification of people at risk for Alzheimer's disease.