2024-04-19 03:33:00
Alzheimer’s, a gene discovered that reduces the risk of developing the disease by up to 70%.
A gene has been discovered that reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s by up to 70%.. The variant that protects against the disease, identified by a study at Columbia University (involving around 11 thousand people), is found in a gene that produces fibronectin, a component of the blood-brain barrier: it is a membrane that surrounds the blood vessels of the brain and which controls the movement of substances in and out of the brain. New hopes for preventing the disease also come from a drug used against the HIV virus.
The discovery of the variant seems to be linked to the better ability to cleanse the brain of toxins across the brain vessel barrier and supports growing evidence that blood vessels themselves play an important role in the disease and could therefore open a new direction in therapeutic development. “We may be able to develop new types of therapies that mimic the protective effect of the gene to prevent or treat the disease”, says Caghan Kizil, co-leader of the study that identified the variant. Fibronectin is usually present in the blood-brain barrier in very limited quantities, but is increased in large quantities in people with Alzheimer’s. The variant that has been identified in the fibronectin gene appears to protect against the disease by preventing excessive accumulation of fibronectin at the blood-brain barrier.
The researchers confirm that hypothesis in a zebrafish model of Alzheimer’s and have other ongoing studies in mice. They also found that reducing fibronectin in animals increased the removal of amyloid, improving the disease. “These findings 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.
As for the hopes that come from the drug used against HIV, during a study on HIV-positive patients it was noted that, if they took a product that blocks the activity of a “reverse transcriptase” enzyme, necessary for the establishment of the AIDS virus and others in the organism, in these a significantly lower incidence of Alzheimer’s was observed. According to scientists from the Sanford Burnha, Prebys medical institute, in San Diego who conducted the study, “a beneficial association has been identified for the first time between the use of a common medicine for HIV carriers and a reduced number diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease”. There research studied around 80 thousand HIV-positive people aged 60 and over and among these more than 40 thousand had taken the drug that blocked the “reverse transcriptase” enzyme for at least three years: the incidence of the disease was equal to 2.46 diagnoses for every thousand HIV positive people who had taken the drug, compared to 6.15 cases diagnosed for every thousand people not treated with the anti-AIDS drug.
“We are faced with somewhat crude data – observes the lead author of the research, Jerold Chun, professor at the center for genetic disorders and aging at Sanford Burnham Prebys -, now the next step will be to understand which versions of the inhibitors of reverse transcriptase are active in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients and therefore which drugs should continue to be studied or developed to verify the possible prevention of the disease”.
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