Factoring in the gender of a parent with dementia could be important in predicting an adult’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, new research suggests.
If a father developed memory problems at a relatively young age, that could mean his children have a higher risk of cognitive problems in old age, the researchers reported on Monday in JAMA Neurology.
Memory problems at any age for mothers was linked to higher than average risk of adult children developing it, too. The age of the onset of memory problems for mothers was not a factor, the study found.
The researchers performed PET scans on 4,400 cognitively unimpaired adults, ages 65-85, looking for deposits of the amyloid-beta protein in the brain that would indicate an elevated risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
Memory impairment in a subject’s mother, or in both parents, was linked with increased amyloid plaques in the volunteer’s brain, the researchers reported.
But memory impairment in a father was only linked with higher amyloid levels in the offspring if the father had experienced “early-onset” cognitive impairment, before age 65.
Having only a paternal history of memory impairment in old age was not associated with higher amyloid levels.
Most of the volunteers were non-Hispanic white people. The researchers say their next steps are to look at other groups and to examine how parental history affects cognitive decline and amyloid accumulation over time and why DNA from the mother plays a role.
“Sex-specific parental history may help… identify high-risk individuals at the earliest stages of disease for prevention,” the researchers concluded.
This newsletter was edited by Bill Berkrot. Additional reporting by Shawana Alleyne-Morris.
