New study finds genetic factor fends off Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08- ... inson.html
by Bruce Goldman, Stanford University Medical Center
About one in every five people carries a version of a gene that—although largely unsung—appears to confer protection against both Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, Stanford Medicine investigators and their colleagues have learned. These lucky people may someday benefit all the more from a vaccine that could slow or stall the progression of these two most common neurodegenerative conditions.
An analysis of medical and genetic data from hundreds of thousands of people of diverse ancestries from several continents has revealed that carrying this gene version, or allele, reduced people's chances of contracting either Parkinson's or Alzheimer's by more than 10% on average.
The evidence suggest that a protein called tau, which is notorious for aggregating in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, may also be involved, in some mysterious way, in the development of Parkinson's disease.
The findings and implications are described in a paper published online Aug. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Emmanuel Mignot, MD, Ph.D., the Craig Reynolds Professor in Sleep Medicine and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, shares senior authorship with Michael Greicius, MD, the Iqbal Farrukh and Asad Jamal Professor and a professor of neurology and neurological sciences, and Jean-Charles Lambert, Ph.D., director of research for Inserm at the University of Lille in France. Lead authors are Yann Le Guen, Ph.D., assistant director of computational biology in Stanford Medicine's quantitative sciences unit; Guo Luo, Ph.D., an instructor of sleep medicine; former postdoctoral scholar Aditya Ambati, Ph.D.; and Vincent Damotte, Ph.D., a bioinformatician associated with Lambert's group.
