They discover that an obsolete medical treatment could cause the transmission of Alzheimer’s

A recent study suggests that early dementia symptoms suffered by eight adults may have been linked to a now-discontinued medical hormone treatment that the patients received decades ago as children. The results of the research were published this Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.

According to scientists, these would be the first known cases of medical transmission of Alzheimer’s in living people. The study explains that early-onset dementia symptoms in patients are the result of abnormal accumulation of amyloid beta protein in the brain, which is closely associated with Alzheimer’s.

Hormones extracted from corpses

The researchers examined eight cases of people with a history of being treated with human growth hormones. Five of the patients were still alive during the study and were between 50 and 60 years old, while the remaining three had died at ages 57, 54, and 47 years.

Five of the patients had symptoms compatible with early-onset dementia from the ages of 48 and 49, while three of them had already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s before the study.

The patients in question had growth hormone deficiencies as children, so they were part of the more than 1,800 people in the United Kingdom who between 1959 and 1985 received treatments with human growth hormones extracted from the pituitary gland of cadavers. This procedure was discontinued after it was discovered that it could transmit a rare, fatal brain disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob (CJD).

The new study suggests that continued exposure to these treatments could also transmit Alzheimer’s, similar to how prion diseases, a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative disorders such as CJD, are transmitted. Although it is not a prion disease, some research suggests that the two characteristic proteins of Alzheimer’s, amyloid beta and tau, behave like prion proteins.

“Uncommon” cases

Both the scientists who participated in the research and other experts who reacted to it clarified that the results refer to “rare” cases, related to obsolete procedures that are no longer used, and there are no indications that Alzheimer’s can be transmitted through contact or during the provision of current routine care.

The study results raise new questions about Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases, as well as highlighting the need to review measures to prevent accidental transmission through other medical and surgical procedures. With RT

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