Last summer, a survey made public by Alzheimer Europe showed that Alzheimer’s disease is at the second most dreaded disease , after cancer. A fear that is all the more real since the WHO has announced that, according to its statistics, cases of dementia (which are caused in the vast majority of cases by Alzheimer’s disease) are expected to double by 2030 and triple by here 2050!
Also, the results of the study which has just been published in the journal Nature Genetics, are they likely to interest (or even reassure) many people! This study makes it possible to take a big step towards understanding of Alzheimer’s disease pointing out the genetic mutations that alter the hippocampus, that part of the brain where memory problems in general and Alzheimer’s disease in particular, begin.
For this study, the researchers peeled “epidemiological studies analyzing the genomes and brain MRIs of 9,232 participants aged 56 to 84“, in Europe and North America, including about 2,000 in France. It appeared that genetic mutations are involved in the reduction of the volume of the hippocampus. However, the study specifies that the triggering factors of these genetic mutations do not are not “still identified“.
