14 DAY TRIAL // A new study reveals that the rate at which Alzheimer's disease progresses in patients can be predicted if healthcare experts look at a genetic variant that was recently discovered by a research team.
The group, which features scientists from numerous research institutes around the world, was led by experts based at the Washington University in St. Louis (WUSL) School of Medicine (WUSM).
Details of the discovery appear in the latest online issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Genetics.
This field of research has been heavily investigated in the past, with countless studies focusing on how the disease develops, and on the factors that trigger it in the first place.
But the new work was not about that. Rather, experts here wanted to develop a method of learning how long it will take for Alzheimer's patients to develop full blown dementia after they get diagnosed.
The new work was therefore conducted on a number of 846 patients, all of which exhibited elevated level of the tau protein in their cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
Researchers have shown some time ago that this protein, when present in large amount, can be considered an indicator of the disease.
The team then proceeded to investigate a single DNA variation in the patients, and where thus able to discover a genetic marker that was correlated with the increased levels of the tau protein.
In other words, the marker was found to be directly linked to the development of Alzheimer's.
“People who carry this genetic marker tend to have higher tau levels at any given stage of the disease than individuals without it,” expert Alison M. Goate, PhD, explains.
“Until now, most studies of genetic risks associated with Alzheimer’s disease have looked at the risk of developing the disease, not the speed at which you will progress once you have it. The genetic marker we’ve identified deals with progression,” she adds.
The expert was the senior investigator on the research, and holds an appointment as the Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Genetics in Psychiatry at WUSM.
“We have looked at data from three separate, international studies, and in all three, we found the same association,” explains Carlos Cruchaga, PhD.
“So we are confident that it is real and that this gene variant is associated with progression in Alzheimer’s disease,” adds the scientist, who was the first author of the PLoS Genetics paper.
He is an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Washington University, and was part of the research group that made the discoveries.