A new study led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in collaboration with the University of Antioquia, Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass. Eye and Ear, and Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, provides insights on why some people may be more resistant to Alzheimer’s disease than others. The findings may lead to strategies to delay or prevent the condition.
Some people who carry mutations in genes known to cause early onset Alzheimer’s disease do not show signs of the condition until a very old age—much later than expected. Studying these individuals may reveal insights on gene variants that reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. In their Nature Medicine study, Yakeel T. Quiroz, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist and neuroimaging researcher at MGH, and her colleagues describe one such patient, from a large extended family with more than 6,000 living members from Colombia, who did not develop mild cognitive impairment until her seventies, nearly three decades after the typical age of onset.
