Neuroscientists have identified a genetic mutation that fends off Alzheimer's disease in people at high risk and could lead to a new way to protect people from the disease.
"Our findings suggest that some of these changes occur in the brain's vasculature and that we may be able to develop new types of therapies that mimic the gene's protective effect to prevent or treat the disease."The protective variant identified by the study occurs in a gene that makes fibronectin, a component of the blood-brain barrier, a lining surrounding the brain's blood vessels that controls the movement of substances in and out of the brain.
"These results gave us the idea that a therapy targeting fibronectin and mimicking the protective variant could provide a strong defense against the disease in people," says study co-leader Richard Mayeux, MD, chair of neurology and the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Epidemiology.
"We hypothesized that these resilient people may have genetic variants that protect them from APOEe4." The two groups combined the data on their 11,000 participants, which allowed them to calculate that the mutation reduces the odds of developing Alzheimer's in APOE4 carriers by 71% and forestalls the disease by roughly four years in those who eventually develop the disease.
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