Researchers analyzed brain imaging and cognitive test data from 1,187 individuals between 3-20 years old. The trial participants were also tested for variants of a gene associated with a high risk for Alzheimer’s, according to The Wall Street Journal.
They found that people with a specific variant gene most associated with heightened risk of Alzheimer’s had a smaller hippocampus — the brain’s memory center — than other trial participants. Other regions of the brain involved with object recognition and decision making also proved to be smallest in the group of study participants who had the variant.
While these changes in brain structure are typically thought to be a result of Alzheimer’s, they might already be present in childhood, suggested Linda Chang, MD, director of the Neuroscience and MRI Research program at the University of Hawaii in Manoa and lead author of the study.
Dr. Chang plans to collaborate with other researchers across the country to create a database of young individuals to study in long-term trials.
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