New Delhi :
An Indian origin scientist has made claims that an immune system gene associated with higher rates of amyloid plaque buildup has been discovered. This gene is a great help to Alzheimer’s patients and older adults who are at risk for the disease.
According to a study conducted by the Indiana University School of Medicine, people with ‘significant memory concerns,’ who are defined as older adults by the scientists complained the most that they had mentally slipped in recent months or years.
But surprisingly they fell under the normal category of people with standard cognition and memory tests.The Alzheimer's researchers have termed the people in this category as the ‘subjective cognitive decline group’.
The essence of the study lies in the fact that effective treatments for Alzheimer's may need to be applied many years before even serious symptoms appear.
This variant had an even stronger effect than the well-known APOE e4 allele which is notorious for its association with the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers assessed using positron emission tomography imaging in nearly 500 individuals and found that the levels of brain amyloid deposits at an initial visit and again two years later.
A genome-wide analysis was then conducted to identify genetic variants associated with the rate of plaque accumulation during this two-year window.
Vijay K. Ramanan, postdoctoral researcher at the IU School of Medicine suggested, “This was an intriguing finding because IL1RAP is known to play a central role in the activity of microglia, the immune system cells that act as the brain’s “garbage disposal system” and the focus of heavy investigation in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases."
The new study found that the amyloid-associated IL1RAP variant was also associated with a lower level of microglial activity as measured by PET scans; greater atrophy of the temporal cortex, a region of the brain involved with memory; faster cognitive decline; and greater likelihood among study participants of progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease.
“These findings suggest that targeting the IL1RAP immune pathway may be a viable approach for promoting the clearance of amyloid deposits and fighting an important cause of progression in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Andrew Saykin, director of the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center and the national Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative Genetics Core.
Mr. Saykin noted that there are available drugs that target the IL-1/IL1RAP pathway for rheumatologic and inflammatory conditions. There are also antibodies against IL1RAP that are being tested to treat certain types of leukaemia.
Those tools could be adapted for laboratory studies to evaluate their potential as Alzheimer’s disease therapies, he said. The research was published in the journal Brain.
(With PTI inputs)
