A new study has the potential to lead to a dramatic spike in the number of diagnosed Alzheimer's cases in the US—as in, hundreds of thousands of people who aren't even experiencing symptoms. The research published in Nature Medicine suggests that people who have two copies of a particular gene variant—APOE4—are all but certain to develop the disease, reports the New York Times. Under the shift in thinking, such people wouldn't be merely warned that they have a high risk of developing the disease, they would be told that they have the disease—a distinct form of it.
The consequences of such a change would be huge because between 2% and 3% of the nation's approximately 330 million people would be affected, per a release from the Saint Pau Research Institute in Spain. As the Times' Pam Belluck puts it, the "new classification would make this type of Alzheimer's one of the most common genetic disorders in the world." Given those numbers, it could lead to an accelerated push to develop treatments, which currently do not exist for people with the double variant. In fact, the side effects of drugs such as Leqembi, which target amyloid plaques in the brain, can be particularly dangerous for such patients, the FDA warns.
Patients in this camp typically develop telltale biological markers by age 55, roughly 10 years earlier than those with other forms of Alzheimer's. So should people in their 40s and younger rush out to get tested? A Stanford neurologist not involved with the study advises against it—because of the lack of current treatments. "My recommendation is if you don't have symptoms, you should definitely not figure out your APOE status," Dr. Michael Greicius tells the Times. "It will only cause grief at this point." (More Alzheimer's disease stories.)
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