{"id":8246,"date":"2023-06-01T09:55:29","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T13:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/?p=8246"},"modified":"2023-07-05T12:38:12","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T16:38:12","slug":"bu-study-finds-unique-alzheimers-risks-for-ashkenazi-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/2023\/06\/01\/bu-study-finds-unique-alzheimers-risks-for-ashkenazi-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"BU Study Finds Ashkenazi Jews are More Likely to Suffer from Alzheimer’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 1, 2023 – Study author Dr. Lindsay Farrer<\/a>,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and other researchers including Dr. Donghe Li<\/a> and Dr. John Farrell<\/a>,<\/span> had their article, Novel loci for Alzheimer’s disease identified by a genome-wide association study in Ashkenazi Jews<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"Donghe\"farrell\"<\/p>\n

Farrer and his colleagues conducted a genome-wide association study for AD in a sample of 3,500 people whose ancestry was almost exclusively Ashkenazi Jewish, including roughly equal numbers of persons with AD and cognitively normal individuals who were identified in a much larger group of EA (European ancestry) participants in large national AD genetics studies using an approach that compared genetic signatures with members of an Ashkenazi Jewish reference sample.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur study illustrates the greatly increased power for detection of genetic associations in communities like Ashkenazi Jews who trace their lineage to a relatively small group of ancestors,” said Farrer. “In such communities, disease-associated variants may be much more frequent compared to samples ascertained from large, mixed populations”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trans-ethnic studies have shown that population differences in genetic background can be leveraged to make novel discoveries that might require a sample size several orders of magnitude larger to achieve similar success studying a single population, according to the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimilarly, studies of small samples from founder populations (ethnic or religious groups whose origins can be traced to a limited number of ancestors and thus have a more homogeneous genetic background) have successfully detected robust and subsequently validated associations of AD with several genes,\u201d the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n

The researchers identified several genetic risk factors for AD, including some previously known (APOE, TREM2) and several novel ones that are strong biological candidates (RAB3, SMAP2, ZNF890P, SPOCK3, GIPR)<\/span>. Study author Dr. Lindsay Farrer said there are lessons to be learned here about genetic diseases in communities with a smaller gene pool. He said the genes highlighted by the study could be relevant to diagnosing and treating Alzheimer’s in other populations.<\/p>\n

Read the full article in The Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 1, 2023 – Study author Dr. Lindsay Farrer,\u00a0and other researchers including Dr. Donghe Li and Dr. John Farrell, had their article, Novel loci for Alzheimer’s disease identified by a genome-wide association study in Ashkenazi Jews, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. Farrer and his colleagues conducted a genome-wide association study for AD in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8246"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8262,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246\/revisions\/8262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/genetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}