Risk of Alzheimer's Rises with Age of Father At Birth But They Forget to Tell the Public About That

They've known that offspring of older fathers have a higher rate of Alzheimer's for at least 8 years and they have known about about cognitive disorders in offspring of older fathers since 1958 or of even before that.



Source: Mayo Clinic
Date: July 26, 2007
More on: Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's Research, Dementia, Healthy Aging, Diseases and Conditions, Elder Care

A New Century Of Alzheimer's Disease Research

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George Bartzokis,M.D.


Visiting Professor

Laboratory of Neuro Imaging,
Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine
635 Charles Young Drive South, Suite 225
Los Angeles, CA 90095-7332



Education

1975-1979, BA Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
1979-1983, MD Yale Medical School, New Haven, CT
1983-1984, Internship, UCLA/WLA VA, Los Angeles, CA
1984-1987, Psychiatry Residency, UCLA NPI, Los Angeles, CA
1987-1990, Schizophrenia Research Fellow, UCLA Dept of Psychology, Los Angeles, CA


Research

Development of brain imaging biomarkers for use in diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders and medication development
Assessing brain maturation and degeneration trajectories over the life-span in normal populations and how neuropsychiatric disorders interact with these processes


Projects

Myelin breakdown in aging and Alzheimer's disease
In vivo quantification of age-related increases in brain iron levels
Evaluation of brain maturational trajectories in normal adults and patientss with neuropsychiatrc diseases


Skills

Quantification of brain iron levels
Quantification of limbic structures volumes
Quantification of brain myelination
Quantification of myelin integrity
Clinical trials
Administration of multidisciplinary teams


Honors

U.S. Patent, Method for Quantitatively Measuring Stored Iron in Tissue Using MRI










This quote is not from a published paper.
I had asked Dr. Bartzokis why risk of non-familial autism, schizophrenia, MS, and Alzheimer's risk increases with the age of the father at a person's birth.



"The issue is that the older man will have sperm that has undergone more divisions and therefore had more chances to have mutations.
The COMPLEXITY of the myelination process makes it more vulnerable to mutations. I am not talking of one specific mutation. Many things could MANIFEST in the myelination or myelin breakdown process because it is so vulnerable - something going slightly wrong will impact it while it will not impact bone growth or the heart. A good example is ApoE4 - whatever else it may affect, it manifests in the reduced capacity of myelin repair and earlier onset of AD."
Labels: I am not talking about a specific mutation, the complexity of the myelination process make it more vulnerable to mutations

Alzheimer's Disease in the Absence of a Major Gene


Neurogenetics. 1998 Aug;1(4):277-80. Links
Paternal age is a risk factor for Alzheimer disease in the absence of a major gene.Bertram L, Busch R, Spiegl M, Lautenschlager NT, Muller U, Kurz A.
Department of Psychiatry, Technical University Munich, Germany.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=10732803&query_hl=8&itool=pubmed_DocSum

Bertram L, Busch R, Spiegl M, Lautenschlager NT, Muller U, Kurz A.
Department of Psychiatry, Technical University Munich, Germany.

We compared the parental age at birth of patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) with that of cognitively healthy control subjects. Within 206 carefully diagnosed AD patients, two groups were distinguished according to the likelihood of carrying a major gene for AD (MGAD). This likelihood was calculated by applying a Bayesian approach which incorporates data on aggregation of the disease, age at onset, and "censoring" ages within the family. All AD patients were ranked by MGAD probability. According to the sample's quartiles, two subgroups were defined representing the 52 individuals with the lowest and the 52 with the highest MGAD probability. Age at onset of dementia, education, and apolipoprotein E epsilon4 allele frequencies were not statistically different between the two groups. Fathers of patients with a low MGAD probability were significantly older (35.7+/-8.1 years) than fathers of both other groups (high MGAD probability 31.3+/-6.9 years, P=0.004; controls 32.6+/-6.8 years, P=0.04, n=50). The differences for mothers were less pronounced and not statistically significant. These findings suggest that increased paternal age is a risk factor for AD in the absence of a major gene, whereas increased maternal age and AD are associated only weakly and independently of genetic disposition.

PMID: 10732803 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]