Many members of Doug Whitney’s family developed Alzheimer’s by the unusually young age of 50. Yet the 73-year-old’s mind is still sharp, and scientists are studying how Whitney and other incredibly rare “escapees” may naturally resist the disease.
Quiroz’s team has a pretty good idea what protected Aliria Piedrahita de Villegas -- an additional genetic oddity that apparently countered the damage from her family Alzheimer’s mutation. But testing showed Whitney doesn’t have that protective factor so something else must be shielding his brain.
Answers can’t come quickly enough for Whitney’s son Brian, who also inherited the devastating family gene. He’s reached the fateful age of 50 without symptoms but knows that’s no guarantee.“I liken my genetics to being a murder mystery,” said Brian Whitney, who volunteers for Washington University studies that include testing an experimental preventive drug. “Our literal bodies of evidence are what they need to crack the case.
But not the way he’d hoped. In 2010, urged by a cousin, Whitney joined the St. Louis research. He also agreed to a genetic test he’d expected to provide final reassurance that his children wouldn’t face the same worry — only to learn he’d inherited the family mutation after all.While Brian inherited the family gene, his sister Karen didn’t — but she, too, is part of the same study, in the healthy comparison group.U.S. researchers aren’t the only ones on the trail of answers.
But remarkably, both copies of her APOE3 gene were altered by the rare “Christchurch” mutation — and researchers think that blocked toxic tau. Instead, maybe “we just need to block what’s downstream of it,” said Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging.
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