Alzheimer's disease is not a single disease but 6 different cases!

A large team of researchers has developed a new method of classifying patients with Alzheimer's disease, suggesting that the disease should be considered as six distinct cases and not as one.

Alzheimer's disease can be classified previously only in two types, either in the early stage of the disease or in the advanced stage, depending on the stage of onset of symptoms in the patient. But some researchers believe that Alzheimer's disease could be more complex and specific.

However, based on medical studies analyzing more than 4,000 patients suffering from "memory stealing disorder", the researchers found that Alzheimer's disease could be divided into six different groups, depending on the degree of sensitivity of patients because they all had genetic differences.

The research team, made up of 18 prestigious universities, including Boston University, Virginia Puget Sound Health System and Indiana University, hopes to bring these results closer to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer.

The team also claims that these findings may explain the lack of success of treating patients using the same drugs for all cases.

The project was led by Dr. Chopharbata Mukherjee of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"Alzheimer's disease, like breast cancer, is not an isolated disease, and I think that a good drug may fail in clinical trials because not everyone has not the same type of Alzheimer's disease, "said Dr. Mujerki.

All participants in the study were patients with advanced Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of the disease, when a person is diagnosed at age 65 or older. more.

The team evaluated patients according to four main factors: memory, language, executive performance (a set of skills allowing a person to perform tasks) and cognitive spatial perception (the way which a person is linked to the visual information of the surrounding space).

The researchers then used the data to link patients to six different types of Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Mukherjee and his colleagues found that 39% of patients had poor results for all four factors. The second highest average group of all cognitive factors excluding memory was 27%, followed by 13% with significantly lower language skills, while 12% reported lower cognitive spatial perception.

Only 3% of respondents reported much worse results in their executive performance tests than the other three, while 6% scored worse for two out of four factors.

The next part of the study examined genetic data at the genome level to determine if there were clear biological differences between subgroups. Significant genetic differences were clearly identified among the six subgroups.

The researchers found 33 different sites in the patient's genetic makeup, which can be clearly related to subgroups of the individual cognitive domain.

The team hopes their study will help find an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease, which is better targeted for each of its six different cases.

Source: Daily Mail