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Some people are resistant to dementia — here’s what their genes can teach us
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Specific gene variants seem to confer resistance to dementia, protecting individuals into old age. Credit: Hector Roqueta Rivero/Getty
The ravages of age touch us all — some more lightly than others. Geneticist Henne Holstege wanted to study people with a particular superpower: those resistant to neurodegeneration, despite their age or their genes putting them at high risk.
Brains of ‘super agers’ are strong producers of new neurons
At first, she struggled to get funders interested. “For five years, all my grants were rejected,” she recalls. “Each time was a cup of poison.”
But she persevered, convinced that these super-agers could help scientists to understand why a privileged few people manage to avoid conditions such as neurodegeneration, which ail so many in older age.
She finally launched her project in 2013, and ever since, Holstege and others in her field have uncovered a rash of gene variants that seem to protect against dementias.
Researchers are increasingly convinced that understanding resilience to dementia is just as interesting as the more familiar genetics of high risk.
The brain, it seems, has its own defence mechanisms against the toxic proteins that cause Alzheimer’s — mechanisms that scientists now hope to exploit.
They think that protective gene variants will help to illuminate how the disease emerges and worsens — and potentially how to treat it. Of particular interest is a group of variants that affect the workings of the ApoE protein (apolipoprotein E), which carries fat molecules essential for cellular function. Some forms of this protein are long-known contributors to the risk of Alzheimer’s. But some recently discovered and rare variants seem to confer resistance.