Reporter Dennis Thompson recently posted an article on the U.S. News and World Report regarding a recent development in the transmission of Alzheimer’s from one generation to another. Alzheimer’s Disease is well known for being carried by the mother, who could possibly pass down the gene to her offspring. However, it is now claimed that one’s father having the disease may impact the child’s inheritance of it, which is something we have never heard of before.
According to the article, fathers who experience a more significant number of tau proteins in their brains could also put their future offspring at higher genetic risk for tau proteins in their brains, which will eventually lead to more significant cognitive depreciation. Tau proteins are essential to neural pathways and provide neuron stability; however, in individuals with Alzheimer’s, these proteins clump together and form tau tangles. According to this article, previous studies led us to believe women were more susceptible to large amounts of tau accumulation in the brain, which may be true; however, these proteins are technically not accrued until a later stage in the disease, as opposed to men. Overall, children of fathers who have significant tau proteins in the brain will have a greater likelihood of developing the disease. In the case of Alzheimer’s Disease, both maternal and paternal effect plays into offspring inheritance, further disapproving research that previously stated otherwise.
I find it fascinating that in all these years of believing that mothers were the drivers of the disease, fathers do play a role in the development of Alzheimer's Disease. This just goes to show more research will produce more results and further explanations of things understood and accepted years ago. As someone who has a family friend with Alzheimer's, this article sparked a curiousity in me to learn more about the disease and grasp a better understanding, and I believe this article played a part in that.
I thought this article was really interesting because it challenges the idea we thought for years that the risk of Alzheimer’s risk mainly comes from the mother’s side. The idea that a father’s brain amount of tau protein buildup could also influence a child’s risk is something I never thought about before. It makes us think about all the other complex genetic inheritance we might have never realized. It made me think of the question: could understanding a parent’s tau levels one day help predict or even prevent Alzheimer’s in their children?
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