Late-life depression may be an early sign of dementiaーNHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS
next up few experiences are as painful as watching a loved one’s memories slowly fade away but as many societies grow older dementia now affects millions of people around the world the mechanisms behind the disease are still not fully understood making it hard to get detect before the onset of clinical symptoms but Japanese researchers have identified a possible link with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder they say people who develop these conditions later in life could be showing early warning signs the researchers focused on a key protein called towel which is associated with dementia they used brain imaging techniques to detect buildup of the protein in people who had developed depression or bipolar disorder in their 40s or later and compared them to healthy control subjects about half of those with mood disorders showed accumulation of tow protein allowing for the impact of age and other factors the figure was about 4.8 times higher than for healthy people there are various early symptoms of dementia and it’s long been thought that mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder could be one of them our research found that more patients than expected have dementia pathologies in their brains for more on this our reporter is Christine Hall joined us now so s can you tell us more about the background of this research sure so there are two proteins that are thought to be involved in the onset of dementia one is amoid beta mhm it’s associated with Alzheimer’s disease a form of dementia and in recent years drugs have been developed to treat Alzheimer’s by reducing buildup of amoid beta in the brain but it isn’t involved in all types of dementia there’s also another protein called TAL which is what the researchers chose to focus on and why were they specifically looking at the relationship with mood disorders well this is something that’s been identified by other research in the past epidemiological and post-mortem studies have both suggested a link between late life mood disorders and dementia the researchers this time were trying to understand how it all fits together at a biological level they used a brain imaging technique called PET to visualize towel accumulation in the brains of patients with mood disorders and they say the result indicates that indicate that such disorders could indeed be an early symptom of dementia so this sounds very hopeful does this open up new treatment options um not quite yet i spoke with Iwatsubo Takeshi the executive president of the Japan Society for Dementia Research he says more detailed research is needed on the progression of patients with late life mood disorders who show tow accumulation or particularly to determine whether it does lead to the onset of dementia well such research may allow for early identification of individuals at risk of developing dementia before its clinical onset well as for treatment options there aren’t currently any drugs available that target tow protein but multiple efforts are underway to develop them anyway this sounds like promising development for dementia research thank you very much S thank you
Japanese researchers have identified a possible link between dementia and mood disorders that develop later in life, such as depression and bipolar disorder. #japan #science #medical #dementia
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