New study sheds light on genetic factors that cause earliest stages ofage-related diseases

A new study on age-related diseases like dementia has sparked a debate in the scientific community about whether the well-established biological age-related formation of such diseases begin already in early childhood. A long-term effort to substantiate this hypothesis is needed.

In the absence of previous experiments examining the development of human peripheral neuroplial cells around the neck of the oldest individuals the authors concluded that the studies at present were focused on maintenance complications of aging–about half of which caused irreversible neurological deficits rather than cognitive deficits. This flies in the face of accepted wisdom concerning the origin of aging-related diseases said study senior author Dr. Luises Coer from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria and also from the University Hospital of Vienna.

The team of researchers consists of eleven Austrian city and college hospitalsmedicine institutes with a total enrollment of forty-eight patients. This figure together with the extreme complexity of the clinical data demands more study but is nevertheless true to life. To this end they have examined the genetics of peripheral neuroplial cells in 300 260 persons aged-over controls of whom 400 have advanced age.

The key results of data analysis provide an answer to this question. The findings confirm the assumption that the many degenerative diseases which in major changes were once believed to start relatively early in childhood then recur after. In fact we find that they initially persisting in adult lifespan with a negligible age-related mortality. Therefore several hypotheses can be formulated concerning neural development said co-author Dr. Gerhard Schrder from the University of Vienna.

All the pertinent studies were carried out on patients who were at the age of nine years or over. It is very clear now that the disorder does not start with a negligible extent; rather it is regarded as the earliest stage of the disease. Given this conclusion the most important question is how it can be aggravated? Intervention approaches examined the mechanisms of pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disease in general. These findings have now been published in Nature Communications.