{"id":40639,"date":"2024-06-14T21:14:53","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T17:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=40639"},"modified":"2024-06-14T21:14:53","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T17:14:53","slug":"is-it-really-possible-to-have-alzheimers-yet-no-symptoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/is-it-really-possible-to-have-alzheimers-yet-no-symptoms\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it really possible to have Alzheimer\u2019s yet no symptoms?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

A special group of people appear to have genes that protect them from the worst effects of Alzheimer\u2019s disease<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

Some people seem to be more resilient to developing Alzheimer\u2019s diseases, despite having the biological hallmarks of the devastating disease. For obvious reasons, scientists are very interested in studying this special group of people.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>Alzheimer’s disease. Pic – OnlyMyHealth<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Alzheimer\u2019s disease, the most common form of dementia, is thought to start because of a build-up of two proteins in the brain: amyloid and tau. Once these proteins accumulate, for yet-to-be-determined reasons, they become toxic to brain cells (neurons) and these cells start dying. As a result, people develop symptoms such as memory loss because the brain can\u2019t function properly with all these dead neurons.<\/span><\/p>\n

This cascade of events has been known for many years and is how the disease progresses in most people with Alzheimer\u2019s. Most people, except a special group who are more resilient. But why are they resilient?<\/span><\/p>\n

How resilient we are against Alzheimer\u2019s?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A recent study in the journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications investigated whether our genes might influence how resilient we are against Alzheimer\u2019s disease symptoms when there are high levels of amyloid in our brain.<\/span><\/p>\n

The scientists conducted a study on the brains of three groups of people. The first group comprised people who had died with Alzheimer\u2019s disease. The second were healthy people who died of natural causes. And the third comprised people who had high levels of Alzheimer\u2019s proteins in the brain but never developed symptoms of the disease during their lifetime \u2013 or at least never had a diagnosis of Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/span><\/p>\n

The last group, they considered as being resilient to Alzheimer\u2019s disease since they had the proteins in their brains but did not have the symptoms or a diagnosis of Alzheimer\u2019s disease during their lifetime.<\/span><\/p>\n

The scientists found that genes related to the activity of the immune system seem to have been more active in the Alzheimer\u2019s resilient group. This would make sense as it is well established that the immune system helps clear the excess proteins from the brain, so genes that help this process might make us more resilient to developing symptoms of the disease.<\/span><\/p>\n

How to become resilient \u2013 even if you don\u2019t have the genes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is great if you have inherited these genes from your parents, but what does it mean for the rest of us who do not have those genes? Is there a way we can make ourselves more resilient to developing Alzheimer\u2019s disease regardless of our genes?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cYes\u201d is the short answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is now good scientific evidence that lifestyle changes and drugs allow us to reduce our risk of developing Alzheimer\u2019s disease in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

In particular, physical activity has been shown to reduce our risk of developing Alzheimer\u2019s, probably because it has a well-known beneficial effect on our immune system and hence helps clear those rogue proteins accumulating in our brains. This means that being more physically active might have the same effect on our Alzheimer\u2019s resilience as those lucky people who have the \u201cright\u201d genes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, we do not know how physically active the resilient people in the study were and how this might have influenced their resilience to Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/span><\/p>\n

As so often in science, it is not clear whether nature (genes) or nurture (lifestyle) contributed to their resilience. The other interesting aspect is that the resilient people in the study died of another cause than Alzheimer\u2019s disease, but they might have developed Alzheimer\u2019s disease eventually if they had lived longer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Hornberger<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Prof of Applied Dementia Research, <\/span>
\nUniversity of East Anglia<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 14 June 2024<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A special group of people appear to have genes that protect them from the worst effects of Alzheimer\u2019s disease<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":40640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[14477,8367,8361],"class_list":["post-40639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-alzheimers-disease","tag-dementia","tag-immune-system"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Alzheimers-disease.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-azt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}