Does Alzheimer’s Follow a Family Gene?
October 19, 2007 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
“Mary Emma, Nanny had Alzheimer’s, too,” Aunt Bess remarked about my maternal grandmother after my mom and Auntie, her sister, developed this disease.
This was something new to me. I’d become caregiver for Auntie after Aunt Bess (their brother’s wife) and Mother could no longer care for Auntie. Then Mother developed the disease and become my care, too.
Aunt Bess and her husband had lived in an apartment of the family farmhouse for nearly 50 years. She had helped care for Nanny in her latter years. However, I never recalled Nanny having symptoms like Mother and Auntie. So I was puzzled when Aunt Bess said this.
What I took, during my teens, as old age forgetfulness might have been the beginning of Alzheimer’s. Aunt Bess helped care for Nanny and again for Auntie when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
So…does it run in families? Did Nanny really have Alzheimer’s? Was much of what we once called “old-age forgetfulness” actually Alzheimer’s?
This causes me to follow the topic of DNA testing of families and the interest genealogists have in finding the DNA of ancestors, such as I wrote about in Will Ancestral DNA Research Reveal Alzheimer’s?
Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei also touched upon this at Eye on DNA in her post, Genetic Genealogy Mildly Hot.
I’m not sure just why this fascinates me so much…trying to determine whether there’s an Alzheimer’s gene or some other commonality that links this disease through the generations of a family. However, I think it could be interesting to know if there is a family pattern of this disease.
There is a familial version of Alzheimer’s Disease that runs genetically, linked to mutations in a gene that codes for the appropriately named “Amyloid Precursor Protein”, which is what gives rise to the amyloid plaques found in Alzheimer’s.