In Brain With Christchurch Mutation, More ApoE3 Means Fewer Tangles alzforum.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from alzforum.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Alzheimer s-defying brain offers clues to treatment, prevention – Harvard Gazette harvard.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from harvard.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Aliria Rosa Piedrahita de Villegas had a rare genetic mutation and should have died from Alzheimer’s disease in her 60s. Instead, she lived dementia-free into her 70s, and now her brain is yielding important clues about the pathology of dementia and possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
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A woman who defied a genetic mutation that guarantees early-onset Alzheimer’s donates her brain to research
By Sonia Fernandez
Her life was nothing short of a miracle.
Born into an extended family of 6,000, all of whom share a rare genetic mutation that inescapably leads to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by the age of 45, Aliria Rosa Piedrahita de Villegas of Antioquia, Colombia, was the sole escapee of that fate. While much younger relatives began to deteriorate mentally and physically, she lived a normal life.
The phenomenon of Piedrahita de Villegas, who died recently at the age of 77, stunned the international team of neuroscientists who had been studying her family for decades.