{"id":17930,"date":"2018-08-02T09:28:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T09:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/?p=17930"},"modified":"2018-08-02T09:28:35","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T09:28:35","slug":"apoe4-gene-found-cause-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/apoe4-gene-found-cause-alzheimers\/","title":{"rendered":"APOE4 Gene Found To Be Alzheimer&rsquo;s Cause"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-fullwidth-1  fusion-parallax-none nonhundred-percent-fullwidth\" style=\"border-bottom-width: 0px;border-top-width: 0px;border-bottom-style: solid;border-top-style: solid;padding-bottom:20px;padding-top:20px;padding-left:;padding-right:;\"><style type=\"text\/css\" scoped=\"scoped\">.fusion-fullwidth-1 {\r\n                            padding-left: px !important;\r\n                            padding-right: px !important;\r\n                        }<\/style><div class=\"fusion-row\"><div class=\"fusion-title title fusion-title-center fusion-title-size-one\"><div class=\"title-sep-container title-sep-container-left\"><div class=\"title-sep sep-double sep-solid\" style=\"border-color:#a36160;\"><\/div><\/div><h1 class=\"title-heading-center\"><span style=\"color: #a36160;\">APOE4 Gene Found To Be\u00a0Alzheimer&rsquo;s Cause<\/span><\/h1><div class=\"title-sep-container title-sep-container-right\"><div class=\"title-sep sep-double sep-solid\" style=\"border-color:#a36160;\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"fusion-sep-clear\"><\/div><div class=\"fusion-separator fusion-full-width-sep sep-none\" style=\"margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;margin-top:;\"><\/div><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Within an extensive study, researchers found a <strong>gene<\/strong> with <strong>harmful effects<\/strong> on the brain that could <strong>cause Alzheimer\u2019s<\/strong> disease: The apolipoprotein (<strong>APOE<\/strong>) gene. It is already known that having <strong>one copy<\/strong> of the APOE4 gene <strong>increases<\/strong> the <strong>risk<\/strong> for Alzheimer\u2019s by <strong>two to three times<\/strong>, and having <strong>two copies<\/strong> puts people even at a <strong>12-times higher risk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The role of the <strong>APOE<\/strong> gene is usually to provide instructions for creating the protein with the same name. <strong>Combined with fats<\/strong>, APOE creates so-called \u201c<strong>lipoproteins<\/strong>\u201d, that help to <strong>transport cholesterol<\/strong> through our bloodstream.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Now researchers found out that the <strong>E4 version<\/strong> of the gene seems to have a <strong>damaging effect to the brain<\/strong> and even increases the risk of toxic amyloid beta and tau build-up. To <strong>figure out why<\/strong> this version of the gene is <strong>more harmful<\/strong> than other variants, scientists needed to locate the <strong>differences <\/strong>between<strong> E3 <\/strong>and<strong> E4<\/strong> variants, to understand what makes this specific gene so <strong>devastating<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For the researchers, there were only <strong>two options<\/strong>. The E4 gene either <strong>destroys<\/strong> some of the <strong>E3 gene functions<\/strong> or it has toxic effects that <strong>damages<\/strong> our <strong>brain\u2019s functions<\/strong>. To better understand the extent of this problem, they <strong>modelled<\/strong> the disease in <strong>human cells<\/strong> and <strong>examined<\/strong> the effect of APOE4 in <strong>human cells for the first time<\/strong>. This is already a huge step for finding out the cause of Alzheimer\u2019s, given that some treatments work perfectly with mice, whereas then, they <strong>fail in clinical trials<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00ab\u00a0Increased amyloid beta production is not seen in mouse neurons and could potentially explain some of the <strong>discrepancies between mice and humans<\/strong> regarding drug efficacy. This will be very important information for future drug development\u00a0\u00bb, says <strong>Chengzhong Wang<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the next step, the team started <strong>comparing neurons<\/strong> that don\u2019t produce the E3 or E4 variant with cells that had the E4 variant of the protein added. As a result, the <strong>first one reacted normally<\/strong>, while the one with the added E4 variant <strong>showed Alzheimer\u2019s-like pathologies<\/strong>. This experiment could prove that APOE4 causes the disease.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To continue, researchers had to learn about <strong>how to fix the gene<\/strong>, which can cause Alzheimer\u2019s. For this, a \u201c<strong>structure corrector<\/strong>\u201d has been developed in order to change the APOE4\u2019s structure more to the APOE3\u2019s gene to <strong>prevent Alzheimer\u2019s<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fusion-sep-clear\"><\/div><div class=\"fusion-separator fusion-full-width-sep sep-none\" style=\"margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;margin-top:;\"><\/div><p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #b2999d;\">References<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Science Daily. Gladstone Institutes (April 9, 2018). Scientists fix genetic risk factor for Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease. Available at: https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2018\/04\/180409112559.htm<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Medical News Today. Ana Sandoiu (September 2017). Alzheimer&rsquo;s: Targeting APOE4 gene may stop the disease. Available at: https:\/\/www.medicalnewstoday.com\/articles\/319492.php<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":17933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","myguten_meta_block_field":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}