Scientists made the breakthrough while studying Colombians who carry genetic mutations which means they are more at risk of developing Alzheimer’s than any other population in the world.
In the town of Yaramul, half of residents will be diagnosed with the disease by the age of 45, while the rest will succumb by the time they are 65. Some have been known to first develop symptoms as young as 32-years-old and researchers have been looking for the genetic differences within the population which offer protection.
Now they have discovered that a mutation of the APOE gene appears to stop the disease taking hold. On average it delayed the development of Alzheimer’s by 17 years. The APOE gene is known to protect against the build of sticky plaques in the brain, and scientists believe the mutation improves that action.
The finding could help scientists develop new treatments to delay the onset of the disease, said lead researcher Associate Professor Mauricio Arcos-Burgos from The Australian National University (ANU).
"If you can work out how to decelerate the disease, then you can have a profound impact," said Dr Arcos-Burgos, a medical geneticist at The John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at ANU.
"I think it will be more successful to delay the onset of the disease than to prevent it completely. Even if we delay the onset by on average one year, that will mean nine million fewer people have the disease in 2050.”
There are 850,000 people currently suffering from dementia in the UK, with Alzheimer`s disease being the most common type. The disease kills at least 60,000 people each year.
Around 99 per cent of drugs trials for Alzheimer’s fail, so instead of finding a cure for the disease once it develops, the team hope to find ways to prevent the condition before it takes hold.
To do that they travelled to the district of Antioquia in northwest Colombia where locals are plagued with what is referred to locally as ‘the foolishness.’
The gene variant which causes early-onset Alzhiemer’s is called E280A and recent studies have shown that it was introduced by a Spanish conquistador early in the 17th century.
The conquistadors , who came to conquer South America for the Spanish Empire began colonising Colombia in the early 16th century.
In all, the researchers were able to isolate nine genes involved in Alzheimer`s, some of which delay the onset by up to 17 years, while others advance its progress.
The research was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
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