EFN

A team of U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday those with the “Alzheimer’s gene” started to have memory declines connected to aging before they reach 60, even if they have no clinical symptoms of dementia.

“There has always been burning questions of when does Alzheimer’s disease begin and how do you define when it begins?” said Dr. Richard J. Caselli, chairman of Mayo Clinic’s neurology department in Arizona and the study’s lead author. “If one is going to do a prevention trial, you have to start a whole lot earlier than what the world was thinking. . . . We are talking about changes in our mid- to late 50s.”

Tests given to 815 research participants in Arizona determined 317 people carried one or two copies of the gene, known as apolipoprotein E or APOE e4. Memory tests given over five years showed participants with two copies of the gene had a elevated risk of memory changes starting in their 50s compared with people who didn’t carry the gene. People with one gene copy showed a higher risk of mental decline in their 60s, said the study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Scientists do not know of any way to stop Alzheimer’s. However, another study determined that almost everyone told of their high genetic risk of the disease was glad that they had been informed.

Those who were informed of their test results, the researchers found, did not have significantly more depression or anxiety than those who were not informed of their test results either immediately after receiving the test results or 1 year later. That was true regardless of whether they were in the subgroup of people found to carry the high-risk APOE e4 gene variant.