The Times - UK (2020-08-06)

18 2GM Thursday August 6 2020 | the times

News

Doing a master’s degree could delay

early onset Alzheimer’s in people with

the gene for the disease, research shows.

Extra years of education were linked

to a reduced build-up of the hallmark

protein, amyloid, in the brains of people

with faulty genes that cause it.

About 1 to 6 per cent of people with

Alzheimer’s have rare genes that cause

the disease to develop in everyone who

has them. Known as “familial Alzheim-

er’s”, this leads to the disease developing

much earlier than normal, in a person’s

thirties, forties or fifties.

Researchers at McGill University in

Montreal, Canada, found that people

with ten years of education had about

twice the amount of disease-causing

amyloid plaques when compared with

people who had studied for longer.

Sylvia Villeneuve, the study author,

said: “Because we’ve assumed that the

effects of these genes can’t be changed,

little research has been done on whe-

ther we can modify the trajectory of the

disease. It’s exciting to see that educa-

tion may play a role in delaying the start

of this devastating disease, which af-

fects people during the prime of life.”

Sara Imarisio, of Alzheimer’s Re-

search UK, said: “These findings pro-

vide more evidence that education

could delay the development of the dis-

ease, allowing the brain to resist against

Longer education

linked to lower

Alzheimer’s risk

disease for longer. While we can’t

change the genes we inherit, this re-

search shows that our lifestyle can still

help to stack the odds in our favour.”

Most people diagnosed with Alz-

heimer’s have a sporadic form caused

by a combination of factors, including a

gene variant that increases the devel-

opment of amyloid plaques in the brain.

This variant is more common than the

genes that cause familial Alzheimer’s.

The study involved one group of 106

people with an average age of 67 who all

had a parent diagnosed with this spo-

radic form of Alzheimer’s disease. Of

these 39 per cent had the gene variant.

A second group consisted of 117

people with an average age of 35 who

had the rare gene mutations linked to

familial Alzheimer’s, of whom 31 per

cent also had the gene variant. None of

the participants showed symptoms of

the disease at the start of the study.

In the people with the gene muta-

tions for familial Alzheimer’s, more

years spent in education was associated

with lower levels of amyloid plaques in

the brain. In both groups, people with

fewer than ten years of education had

about twice the amount of amyloid pla-

ques when compared with people who

had more than 16 years of education.

The authors said that the study was

limited because most participants were

white and factors such as socio-eco-

nomic status would affect education.

Katie Gibbons

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WEST MIDLANDS POLICE/PA

P

olice are

seeking a

hit-and-run

driver who

careered into a

dog walker, killing her

pet (Neil Johnston

writes).

The woman was

walking her

Staffordshire bull

terrier, Millie, in Great

Barr, Birmingham,

when a Renault Clio hit

them on July 22. CCTV

footage shows the car

losing control, crossing

the carriageway and

hitting the woman. It

then disappeared into

undergrowth.

A black Vauxhall

Astra, which had passed

moments earlier, stops.

Two men get out of the

Astra, which had no

road tax, look back and

the driver reverses. Two

men and a woman run

from where the Renault

crashed, in a 30mph

zone. Police believe that

the people in the two

cars knew each other.

The injured woman

was helped by an off-

duty nurse who was first

on the scene, then

treated in hospital.

Driver fled after

hitting dog walker

The woman and her dog

were hit from behind by

the careering Renault Clio.

A woman and one of two

men can be seen running

away. The dog was killed