This is interesting….88% of us have a CLU gene allele that is associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer’s.
ScienceDaily (May 16, 2011) — What if you were told you carried a gene that increases your risk for Alzheimer’s disease? And what if you were told this gene starts to do its damage not when you’re old but when you’re young?
Scientists know there is a strong genetic component to the development of late-onset Alzheimer’s. In 1993, researchers discovered a gene known as ApoE4 — carried by about a quarter of us — that triples the risk for getting Alzheimer’s. In 2009, three more risky genes were discovered, and one of them, called clusterin, or CLU, was found to up the risk of getting Alzheimer’s by another 16 percent.
But nobody could explain what the CLU gene actually did. Now, UCLA researchers know, and the explanation is a doozy: This risk gene begins to damage your brain a full 50 years before people normally get Alzheimer’s.
More here: Alzheimer’s risk gene disrupts brain’s wiring 50 years before disease hits.
