https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-08/aaon-emb073120.php
News Release 5-Aug-2020
American Academy of Neurology
American Academy of Neurology
Even for people who carry the gene for early onset Alzheimer's disease, more years of education may slow the development of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain that are associated with the disease, according to a new study published in the August 5, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
About 1-6% of people with Alzheimer's disease have rare genes that cause the disease in everyone who has them. This is called familial Alzheimer's disease. It leads to an early onset of the disease, when people are in their 30s to 50s.
"Because we've assumed that the effects of these genes can't be changed, very little research has been done on whether we can modify the trajectory of the disease," said study author Sylvia Villeneuve, PhD, of the McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "It's exciting to see that education may play a role in delaying the start of this devastating disease, which affects people during the prime of life."
About 1-6% of people with Alzheimer's disease have rare genes that cause the disease in everyone who has them. This is called familial Alzheimer's disease. It leads to an early onset of the disease, when people are in their 30s to 50s.
"Because we've assumed that the effects of these genes can't be changed, very little research has been done on whether we can modify the trajectory of the disease," said study author Sylvia Villeneuve, PhD, of the McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "It's exciting to see that education may play a role in delaying the start of this devastating disease, which affects people during the prime of life."
Researchers found that in the people with familial early onset Alzheimer's, increasing levels of education were associated with lower levels of amyloid plaques in the brain. The strength of the association between education and plaque levels was similar to the strength of this same association in people at risk of sporadic Alzheimer's disease.
In both groups, people with less than 10 years of education had about twice the amount of amyloid plaques when compared to people with more than 16 years of education.
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A limitation of the study was that most participants were white, so results may not be the same for all people. Also, the quality of education may be affected by other factors like socioeconomic status, so future studies should look more closely at other factors in addition to years of education to determine whether other environmental factors may be at play to explain these study results.
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