Important Research – First Genome-Wide Association Study in DLB

This is a good summary from Alzforum about research published last Friday out of two of the world’s largest brain banks — the University College London and the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville.  Researchers genotyped 1743 patients — 1324 of those patients had autopsy-confirmed dementia with Lewy bodies.  They were looking for genome-wide associations in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).  Basically, they were trying to answer the question — how much of DLB can be explained by genetics?

This breakthrough research was made possible through brain donation.  Our nonprofit, Brain Support Network, has helped over 450 families with brain donation.  All of those families we’ve helped where the diagnosis was confirmed DLB were involved in this important research!  Please let us know if this is interest to your family and we can help make advance arrangements.

“The researchers calculated that, overall, genetic variants account for about 36 percent of the risk for DLB in this sample. This is roughly the same as for PD, but much less than that for late-onset AD.”  Previously-known associations were confirmed — APOE, SNCA (synuclein), and GBA.  “The APOE locus emerged as the most strongly associated with DLB, with the SNCA gene for α-synuclein next. Interestingly, though, the particular SNCA SNPs were different from the ones associated with PD.”  A new loci was discovered — CNTN1.

The study was funded by two UK organizations — Alzheimer’s Society and Lewy Body Society.

Here’s a link to the Alzforum summary:

And MedicalXpress had a good summary of the research as well.  Here’s a link to that as well:

medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-dementia-lewy-bodies-unique-genetic.html

Dementia with Lewy bodies: Unique genetic profile identified
December 15, 2017
MedicalXpress

Robin