Latest Medical Discovery: a Treatment for Alzheimer’s?

Researchers have discovered a rare mutation that may help prolong the development of Alzheimer’s.

“Reading that paper made the hair on my arms stand up. It’s just such an important new avenue to pursue new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease,” says Catherine Kaczorowski, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.

The finding comes after a decades-long study of an extended Colombian family. The family tends to have a genetic mutation that leads to early-onset Alzheimer’s, many of whom suffer from the disease in their early 40s. Scientists were intrigued when a brother and sister within the same family did not show signs of cognitive decline until much later, in her 50s and in his late 60s. They found that both the brother and sister had a rare, different mutation that starved off the onset of the memory-destroying disease. Though more research must be done, this discovery is hugely important and could eventually lead to treatments for the currently-irreversible disease.