Dementia-free people who have two parents with Alzheimer's disease may show signs of the disease on PET and MRI brain scans decades before symptoms appear, according to a new study in Neurology.
Researchers studied 52 dementia-free individuals between the ages of 32 and 72, who underwent several brain scans, including PET and MRI. The study participants were split into four groups of 13 people each: those with a mother with Alzheimer's disease, a father with Alzheimer's, both parents with the disease, or no family history of Alzheimer's (Neurology, February 12, 2014).
Participants who had both parents with Alzheimer's disease showed more severe abnormalities in brain volume and metabolism, and they had 5% to 10% more brain plaque in certain brain regions compared with the other three groups.
In addition, those whose mothers had Alzheimer's disease exhibited a greater level of Alzheimer's disease biomarkers than those whose fathers had the disease. This is consistent with previous studies showing that people with a mother with Alzheimer's were more likely to develop it than those with a father with Alzheimer's, according to lead author Lisa Mosconi, PhD, from New York University School of Medicine.
