According to the recent study, the treatment received in order to prevent rejection of organs after the successful organ transplant also protects from Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers recently made this discovery while analysing the data that revealed Alzheimer’s disease and dementia have occurred at much lower rates among the patients who have had any sort of organ transplant.
During this study, researchers have analysed the medical data recorded from 2,644 American patients who have underwent the organ transplant surgery. Researchers revealed that from the high number of these patients, the low signs of dementia were detected among 8 patients only. According to the researchers, two of the patients who showed the signs of dementia were younger than the age of 65, five of them fell between the age group of 65-74 years and one of them fell between the age ranges of 75-84 years.
The researchers further compared this data with the data obtained from the 2014 US data of Alzheimer’s Association. “These data clearly show that the prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer’s in our transplant patient group is significantly lower, in fact almost absent, when compared to national data from the general population,” stated senior author Luca Cicalese, from University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).
Professor Cicalese further claimed that “In patients over 65 years, 11 percent of the general population had dementia compared with 1.02 percent of the study subjects. In Americans over 75 years, 15.3 percent of the population had dementia compared with 0.6 percent of the study subjects,”
According to the previous study, an enzyme known by the name of calcineurin plays a very important role in the provision of harmful effects of proteins. These harmful effects of protein are directly linked with memory impairment. The treatment with calcineurin-blocking agent forcefully suppresses body’s immune system so the effective nature of these medicines could not be easily experimented in order to stop the progression of dementia or Alzheimer in old patients.
“Taken together, our results from these people confirm our notion that calcineurin inhibition has a protective effect on the development and possible progression and even reversal of Alzheimer’s disease,” revealed the senior author and professor Giulio Taglialatela.
