What you don't want to know

OK, does the next article scare me half to death, yep it sure does, but I have taken my postings very seriously on this blog, so I feel the need to share this one with you.  You can never be to prepared.  So here it goes.

Bad gene, parent with dementia raise memory-loss risk

09:16 PM CST on Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Bloomberg News

Middle-age people are two to three times more likely to have poor memories if they have a parent with dementia as well as one or two copies of a gene known to increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease, a study found.

Researchers at Boston University gave memory tests to 715 people whose average age was 60 and also checked if they had a variant of a gene known as ApoE4 that increases the risk of Alzheimer's. Among people with one or two copies of the bad gene, those who had a parent with dementia performed much more poorly on the memory tests than people whose parents didn't have dementia, said Sudha Seshadri, an associate professor at the university's Alzheimer's Disease Center.

The findings may help families of the 5.2 million people in the U.S. who have Alzheimer's, a progressive, fatal disease that destroys brain cells, understand their risks. Americans older than 55 fear they will develop Alzheimer's more than any other illness, according to a 2006 MetLife Foundation survey.

"What's interesting is the fact that the difference is so large between the two groups," Seshadri, the study's senior author, said in a telephone interview today. "It's equivalent to the difference between people who are 15 years apart."

As people age, their memories often decline. None of the people who were tested had clinical symptoms of dementia and all fell within the wide definitio

ns of normal memory performance, Seshadri said.

Reducing Risk

At this point, there are no special steps middle-age people should take if their parents have dementia beyond following standard healthy-living practices, Seshadri said.

"Everybody who is middle-aged needs to do things to reduce their risk of dementia and heart attack by staying socially engaged, engaging in physical activity, controlling their blood pressure and diabetes and maintaining a healthy weight," she said. "Those are things everybody should do."

Ten million baby boomers eventually will develop it, says the Alzheimer's Association, adding urgency to efforts to prevent or treat the illness.

For the study, Seshadri and her colleagues followed children born to people who were enrolled in the long-running Framingham Heart Study begun 50 years ago.

Further research over time will be needed to see if the people who scored more poorly will go on to develop dementia at a greater rate than their peers whose sc

ores were higher, Seshadri said. The findings were released in advance of the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, where Seshadri's study will be presented at the end of April.

Thanks for reading even though you might not want to know.  I know that I don't even like to think about my chances of having AD and what my husband may have to go through.  I've prayed about it and I know that God will do what's best according to his plan.

Blessings & More,

Magnolia