People with family history of Alzheimer’s disease may show memory changes four decades before typical age of onset

Summary: People with a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease may exhibit changes in memory up-to four decades before the typical age of dementia onset.

Source: TGen

Results from a study of nearly 60,000 individuals suggest those at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease due to family history may demonstrate changes in memory performance as early as their 20s.

Researchers from the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, and the University of Arizona gathered the data through an online word-pair memory test called MindCrowd, one of the world’s largest scientific assessments of how healthy brains function.

Published today in the scientific journal eLife, study data suggests that those with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, and who are younger than 65, on average, do not perform as well as their peers who do not have a family history of Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.

The study results suggest that the family history effect is particularly pronounced among men, as well as those with lower educational attainment, diabetes, and carriers of a common genetic change in APOE, a gene long associated with Alzheimer’s disease risk.

While family history has previously been associated with the risk of Alzheimer’s, this is the first study of its kind, and in these numbers, that indicates this risk can be detected up to four decades before the typical age of onset. The study looked at 59,571 MindCrowd participants aged 18-85, and the effect of family history was shown across every age group, up until age 65.

“In this study, we show that family history is associated with reduced paired-associate learning performance as many as four decades before the typical onset of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Matt Huentelman, TGen Professor of Neurogenomics, and the study’s senior author

Because there is no cure or proven way of slowing progressive memory-loss among those with Alzheimer’s, early indicators of the disease can help those at risk to focus on ways to help stave off dementia.

“Risk reduction for Alzheimer’s disease is now more critical than ever due to the continued lack of a cure or effective disease-slowing treatment,” said Dr. Joshua S. Talboom, a Postdoctoral Fellow in TGen’s Neurogenomics Division, and a member of Dr. Huentelman’s lab.

“This study supports recommendations underscoring the importance of living a healthy lifestyle and properly treating disease states such as diabetes,” said Dr. Talboom, the study’s lead author.

“Our findings specifically highlight the positive effects of such interventions for those with a family history risk of Alzheimer’s, opening the door to the development of more targeted risk-reduction approaches to combat the disease.”

In addition, this study underscores the utility of web-based participant recruitment to research studies like MindCrowd, facilitating large sample sizes in a cost- and time-effective fashion, said Dr. Lee Ryan, a University of Arizona Alzheimer’s researcher, who along with the UA’s Dr. Betty Glisky, helped Dr. Huentelman develop MindCrowd. Drs. Ryan and Glisky were contributing authors to the study.

“It should be acknowledged that web-based studies are not without concerns. However, we propose that the advantage of considerably larger sample sizes and enriched participant diversity in online research mostly diminishes the potential disadvantages,” Dr. Ryan said.

The MindCrowd study (www.mindcrowd.org) began in 2013. By August 2018, it had nearly 60,000 qualified participants, whose performance is reflected in the study. Today, more than 115,000 people, aged 18-95 — from all 50 states and 150 nations around the world — have completed the MindCrowd assessment.

This shows a man looking out of a window
The study results suggest that the family history effect is particularly pronounced among men, as well as those with lower educational attainment, diabetes, and carriers of a common genetic change in APOE, a gene long associated with Alzheimer’s disease risk. The image is in the public domain.

MindCrowd cannot tell you if you have Alzheimer’s. What it does give researchers is a set of data baselines about how people not suffering from the disease perform at different ages; among men and women, among those with quick and slow physical responses, among those who smoke and those who don’t, and among many other demographic, lifestyle and health factors.

Establishing these baselines will help researchers to more properly evaluate Alzheimer’s patients and usher in a new era of what the MindCrowd developers describe as Precision Aging.

Alzheimer’s is a progressive neurological disorder that typically presents clinically as deficits in memory and thinking. It is estimated that more than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s and that by 2050 that number will nearly triple to almost 14 million.

The Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the University of Miami also contributed to the study.

Funding: The study — Family history of Alzheimer’s disease alters cognition and is modified by medical and genetic factors — was funded by the Mueller Family Charitable Trust, the Arizona Department of Health Services in support of the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, the Flinn Foundation, The McKnight Brain Research Foundation, The Fulbright Program, the Intel Foundation, the TGen Foundation, and grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Alzheimer’s Institute.

The authors also acknowledge the support of many individual donors, and the social media recruitment efforts of actors Lynda Carter, Valerie Bertinelli and Ashton Kutcher.

About this neuroscience research article

Source:
TGen
Media Contacts:
Steve Yozwiak – TGen
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: Open access
“Family history of Alzheimer’s disease alters cognition and is modified by medical and genetic factorsr”. Joshua S Talboom, Asta K Håberg, Matthew D De Both, Marcus A Naymik, Isabelle Schrauwen, Candace R Lewis, Stacy F Bertinelli, Callie Hammersland, Mason A Fritz, Amanda J Myers, Meredith Hay, Carol A Barnes, Elizabeth Glisky, Lee Ryan, Matthew J Huentelman .
eLife. doi:110.7554/eLife.46179

Abstract

Family history of Alzheimer’s disease alters cognition and is modified by medical and genetic factors

In humans, a first-degree family history of dementia (FH) is a well-documented risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD); however, the influence of FH on cognition across the lifespan is poorly understood. To address this issue, we developed an internet-based paired-associates learning (PAL) task and tested 59,571 participants between the ages of 18-85. FH was associated with lower PAL performance in both sexes under 65 years old. Modifiers of this effect of FH on PAL performance included age, sex, education, and diabetes. The Apolipoprotein E ε4 allele was also associated with lower PAL scores in FH positive individuals. Here we show, FH is associated with reduced PAL performance four decades before the typical onset of AD; additionally, several heritable and non-heritable modifiers of this effect were identified.

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