BOSTON: Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that mutations that trigger hallmark features of Alzheimer’s disease function by decreasing, not increasing function of the presenilin-1 protein and gamma-secretase enzyme.
The finding explains why drugs designed to block presenilin activity have failed, they reported in Neuron. The discovery sheds more light on rare cases of familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD), which only accounts for about 1% of cases.