Is Alzheimer's Inherited From Mom

A new study seems to add to mounting evidence that Alzheimer's disease may be inherited from your mother if one of your parents has the disease.

But a well-known Alzheimer's specialist says the findings are flawed, Rift Goldand there is no solid proof showing that type of dementia has a maternal genetic link -- or any genetic link at all.

Researchers at the University of Kansas School of Medicine looked at 53 people ages 60 and older without dementia for a period of two years. Eleven of them said their mothers had Alzheimer's, 10 reported a father with the memory-loss illness and 32 said they had no family history of the condition.

Throughout the course of the study, RIFT Platinumpublished in the March 1 issue of Neurology, all participants underwent cognitive testing and brain scans.

By the end of the two-year period, the authors said, those whose mothers had Alzheimer's showed twice as much shrinkage of gray matter in their brains -- which is a symptom of the disease -- as those with a father who had Alzheimer's and those with no family history.

Furthermore, subjects whose mother had Alzheimer's had roughly one-and-a-half times more shrinkage of the entire brain than those whose fathers had the disease.

"Using 3-D mapping methods,rift gold we were able to look at the different regions of the brain affected in people with maternal or paternal ties to Alzheimer's disease," study author Robyn Honea said in a statement. "In people with a maternal family history of the disease, we found differences in the break-down processes in specific areas of the brain that are also affected by Alzheimer's disease, leading to shrinkage."

But Peter Davies, the director of the Litwin-Zucker Center for Research in Alzheimer's Disease,RIFT Platinum said the study is misleading because there are more women in the population than men.

"Observationally, that just isn't true in general," he told AOL Health of the theory that the illness is passed down from the mother's side. "There's a number bias here because there are more women with Alzheimer's than men -- but only because women live longer than men. That puts more women into the age of risk for Alzheimer's."

He said all the research on the matter, which dates back about 20 years, has failed to account for that simple fact.

"If you start to look at whether your mother or your father has Alzheimer's disease, it's more likely to be your mother," he told AOL Health. "But you need to correct for the fact that there are more women than men."TERA Gold Most studies that have done that have failed to prove a maternal genetic tie to the illness, he said.

Honea said her findings are in line with other previous research suggesting that Alzheimer's may be inherited by immediate family members.

"It is estimated that people who have first-degree relatives with Alzheimer's disease are four to 10 times more likely to develop the disease themselves compared to people with no family history," said Honea. "Understanding how the disease may be inherited could lead to better prevention and treatment strategies."

But Davies said there's no hard proof that the disease is genetic at all, and criticized the latest findings for relying on too small a pool of participants, as he says past research on the subject has.

"Alzheimer's is not, most of the time, inherited," he said. "Is there an increased risk [with family history]? It depends. There's no clear answer to that question."