Dementia: A Family Disease

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- New research has linked genes with a rare brain disorder that causes early dementia.

Frontotemporal dementia is a rare brain disorder that destroys parts of the brain and leads to dementia. The disease mostly affects people under the age of 65 and is formally known as Pick's disease.

The study involved 225 people who were diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. Researchers tested a sample of blood for five gene mutations and asked patients about their family history of dementia to compare heritance. Researchers found 42 percent of the participants had some family history of dementia and only 10 percent of patients had autosomal dominant gene history.

"Many people were still found to have a strong family history of dementia even without having any of the five known gene mutations, suggesting that there are still unknown genes that cause frontotemporal dementia," study author Jonathan Rohrer, M.R.C.P., a clinical research fellow at the Dementia Research Center at the University College London in the United Kingdom, was quoted as saying. "Discovering new genes and gene mutations could provide another key to unlocking the doors to new treatments and prevention strategies for dementia," Rohrer said.

SOURCE: Neurology, November 3, 2009