Are you 50? It's time to be tested!
An international team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Boston University, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Oslo has presented a new tool for detecting mild cognitive disorders that can develop at the age of about 50 and are known to be a precursor to Alzheimer's disease.
The new scale was created based on studies of the polygenic search for associations associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms, or snips (from the English single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP). Simply put, the scale was based on accumulated data on the effect of genomic variations on the clinical manifestation of Alzheimer's disease, which allows identifying genetic risk factors and predisposition to the disease.
The existing scales are aimed at the elderly, whose average age is 70 years. Nevertheless, it has already been proven that the first changes in the brain characteristic of Alzheimer's disease begin decades before the clinical manifestation of dementia.
Close attention paid to a younger population will allow identifying people at risk and timely start preventive and curative measures.
The authors found that the risk of Alzheimer's disease assessed on the new scale, located within the upper quartile, was 2.5-3 times more likely to be accompanied by mild cognitive disorders compared to the risk index within the lower quartile.
Mild cognitive disorders include, as an example, difficulties with finding the right word in a conversation or frequent cases of loss of personal belongings. According to statistics from the National Institute of Aging, eight out of ten people have mild cognitive disorders that turn into Alzheimer's disease after seven years.
An interesting finding in the development of the scale was the discovery of the relationship between cognitive disorders and diabetes mellitus: it was three times more common among people at high risk.
The new risk assessment scale is not yet available to primary care physicians, but it is certainly an important tool for researchers whose goal is to reduce the incidence and, ultimately, completely defeat Alzheimer's disease.
Article by M. U. Logue et al. The use of an Alzheimer's disease polygenic risk score to identify mild cognitive impairment in adults in their 50s is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru Based on UC San Diego News Center: Polygenic Risk Score May Identify Alzheimer's Risk in Younger Populations.