A team of French researchers recently highlighted a genetic factor that would largely explain the risk differences in Alzheimer’s disease between populations, paving the way to optimizing therapeutic trials.
Scientists from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), the Institut Pasteur de Lille, the University of Lille and the CHU in Lille show that “although there is a genetic component common to different populations around the world, the Apolipoprotein E gene (the major genetic factor of pathology) would be a large part of the genetic variability The disease between these populations, ”said an Inserm press release.
Neurodegenerative diseases, whose Alzheimer’s disease, affect more than a million people in France, recalls the same source, adding that “if diagnostic tools have changed a lot in recent years, current treatments are still lacking in efficiency”.
Recently, several major advances have made it possible to better understand the mechanisms linked to the risk for an individual given to develop the disease, notes the press release, noting that the French team has identified “a large part of the genes involved in the occurrence of the disease and seeks to understand how these genes intervene in the development of the pathophysiological process”.
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In their work, published in the journal “Nature Genetics”, the researchers evaluated the associations of genetic risk scores with the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and this in various populations around the world (Australia, Africa, Asia, America in North and South and Europe).
The results of the study indicate that “for the common forms of the disease, there are two distinct genetic entities: one depends mainly on a genetic risk factor called apolipoprotein E (APOE) and the other on a combination of many genetic risk factors”.
“Surprisingly, this last entity is quite similar between the different populations around the world while the impact of the Apoe differs between these different populations,” said the study.
Thus, the Apoe gene would carry a large part of the genetic variability relating to the risk of developing alzheimer’s disease between these populations, according to the same source.
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