Study
Sad record: reached by Alzheimer’s at 19
Chinese specialists have diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease in a very young man already suffering from significant memory problems.
Posted
MRI images of the brain can detect signs of Alzheimer’s.
Getty
Beijing doctors have diagnosed a 19-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease. If their diagnosis is correct, it is the earliest case ever identified. And it remains mysterious.
This young man had significant symptoms from the age of 17, report specialists in the «Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease». He already had problems with short-term memory and concentration. Problems that then got worse. He could not remember events that happened the day before, regularly lost his things, could no longer know if he had eaten or not and encountered reading difficulties. He had to quit his studies. However, he remained independent.
He was treated at Xuanwu University Hospital in Beijing, in a ward specializing in memory disorders, and passed a whole battery of tests. Verdict: the young man is “probably affected” by Alzheimer’s disease.
A neurodegenerative dementia that generally strikes the elderly, Alzheimer’s also sometimes affects younger people. In 5-10% of cases, cognitive impairment is diagnosed in people under the age of 65, reports “The world”.
No pathological mutations
But almost all known cases of people affected by the disease before the age of 30 carried pathological mutations in certain genes. However, this is not the case for the 19-year-old young man, who also had no history that could explain the disease. And no genetic predispositions either: no history of dementia in his close family.
Without knowing why, the young man would therefore be affected by the sporadic form of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common, but which normally strikes the elderly.
“Such a very early-onset form of the disease, with no known genetic background, invites further reflection on the pathogenic mechanisms and the limits of current genetic testing technologies in the field of Alzheimer’s disease,” writes George Perry, of the University of Texas, in an editorial associated with the publication of Chinese doctors. He thus suggests that the young man could carry pathological mutations in genes that are still unknown.
The 19-year-old is now being followed, which will also eventually confirm the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.