United States: A new scientific study indicates that people whose fathers experienced Alzheimer’s disease might develop brain modifications linked to the degenerative disorder.
Information from Neurology research shows Alzheimer’s patients whose fathers had the disease developed wider tau protein distributions in their brains, as reported by HealthDay.
Brain tissue containing toxic tau tangles serves as a key marker for advanced stages of Alzheimer’s dementia.
Tau Tangles: A Major Warning Sign
Studies have historically shown that Alzheimer’s genetic vulnerability passes from affected mothers to offspring instead of fathers.
“We were surprised to see that people with a father with Alzheimer’s were more vulnerable to the spread of tau in the brain, as we had hypothesized that we would see more brain changes in people with affected mothers,” senior researcher Sylvia Villeneuve, said in a news release. She is the research chair of early detection of Alzheimer’s disease at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
The Study at a Glance
Researchers studied 243 subjects with Alzheimer’s family background who demonstrated no memory or cognitive decline before turning 68 on average. The research team established family history as the presence of Alzheimer’s disease in both parents or at least two instances of the disease among siblings.
The participants received brain scan imaging along with cognitive assessment when the study began with an average duration of nearly seven years for the follow-up.
The follow-up studies tracked 243 participants and confirmed that 71 participants developed mild cognitive impairment that may indicate Alzheimer’s.
The researchers detected broader tau protein distribution within the brains of individuals with fathers who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
Results indicate that people who had both high brain tau levels and a father with Alzheimer’s disease would show increased cognitive deterioration.
Overall, researchers found that women’s brains tended to accumulate more tau, “indicating that women are more susceptible to the spread of…tau.”
Father’s Impact and Female Susceptibility
“This suggests that female sex is more strongly associated with late-stage tau accumulation, aligning with previous findings of faster cognitive decline in female patients with Alzheimer’s disease once impairment begins,” says an accompanying editorial co-written by Lyduine Collij, a postdoctoral fellow in the Clinical Memory Research Unit at Lund University in Sweden, as reported by HealthDay.
“Better understanding these vulnerabilities could help us design personalized interventions to help protect against Alzheimer’s disease,” study author Villeneuve said.