Some people seem to be more resilient to developing Alzheimer’s diseases, despite having the biological hallmarks of the devastating disease. For obvious reasons, scientists are very interested in studying this special group of people. Alzheimer’s 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’t function properly with all these dead neurons. This cascade of events has been known for many years and is how the disease progresses in most people with Alzheimer’s.
Most people, except a special group who are more resilient. But why are they resilient? A recent study in the journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications investigated whether our genes might influence how resilient we are against Alzheimer’s disease symptoms when there are high levels of amyloid in our brain. The scientists conducted a study on the brains of three groups of people.
The first group comprised people who had died with Alzheimer’s disease. The second were healthy people who died of natural causes. And the third comprised people who had high levels of Alzheimer’s proteins in the brain but never developed symptoms of the disease during their lifetime – or at least never had a diagnosis of Alzheime.
