Balancing Act

The Arizona Republic and Yahoo are reporting that scientists made a major technical breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research.

Apparently researchers have found a human gene that may very well predict a person’s chances of being afflicted with the debilitating disease. The name of this gene is GAB-2.

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The Translational Genomics Research Institute and Banner Alzheimer’s Institute estimate that approximately 5 million people are impacted by the progressive neurological disease.

While researchers are not sure what causes Alzheimer’s dissease, those with Alzheimer’s suffer from memory loss, impaired ability in logic, general confusion and death in older adults. Researchers do believe that the brains of those with Alzheimer’s sufferer from brain damage caused by plaques and tangles that block signals and ultimately cause cells to shrink and die.

Dr. Dietrich Stephan, Director of TGen’s neurogenomics division had this to say about the discovery.
“This is a major breakthrough in Alzheimer’s genetic research that will have an impact on the clinical treatment of the disease.”

Thanks to Yahoo for their article. For more information please read Yahoo’s article on Alzheimer’s discovery.