“The largest international study ever carried out on Alzheimer’s disease, coordinated by the joint research unit Inserm-Institut Pasteur de Lille-Université Lille Nord de France, has just identified 11 new regions of the genome involved in the occurrence of this neurodegenerative disease. Thus welcomes the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), referring to the feat achieved in less than three years by 189 researchers from 14 countries around the world. The results have been published by the magazine Nature Genetics October 27.
“These 11 new confirmed genes open up new avenues in understanding the onset of Alzheimer’s disease”, explains Inserm. They also make it possible to work on new treatments and to identify the genetic profile of patients who present a risk of developing the disease. About 860,000 French people are affected by Alzheimer’s disease currently and the number of patients should reach two million in France in 2020.
The research took place in two stages. First, the scientists analyzed their joint data, a total of more than 17,000 cases of Alzheimer’s disease, collected in Europe and North America and compared with some 37,000 healthy controls. They then verified these results in independent samples from 11 different countries totaling 8,572 patients and 11,312 controls. “This made it possible to confirm the discovery of 11 new genes in addition to those already known and to identify 13 others in the process of being validated”, specifies Inserm. The various authors of the study also discovered that certain genes of the immune system would play a role in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and in multiple sclerosis.
“This work demonstrates that given the complexity of such a disease, only a pooling of research efforts at the global level will make it possible to find solutions more quickly to this scourge of the 21st century”, concludes the Institute.
