Adults with a genetic variation enabling them to express higher levels of fetal hemoglobin may have a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, researchers say.
A study of 209 families with at least two siblings with Alzheimer’s and one unaffected sibling showed that those with this genetic variation are less likely to have the disease, researchers say in Neurobiology of Aging. An estimated 25 percent of the population has the XmnI polymorphism.
The study, available online but not yet scheduled for print, also showed that beta amyloid peptide, a major culprit in Alzheimer’s, has an affinity for adult hemoglobin, says Dr. William D. Hill, neuroscientist at the Medical College of Georgia and Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta and a corresponding author. The hemoglobin attraction was discovered by using phage display technology to screen thousands of molecules in the human brain to find those that interact with beta amyloid peptide. This approach uses a virus to infect a bacterium so the bacterium will copy the virus.