Dr. Wendy Qiu is corresponding author on BU Alzheimer’s Study Examining the Role of Inflammation in Alzheimer’s Disease
As reported in the Friday, October 19, 2018 edition of The Boston Globe, Boston University researchers published results of their study on the examining the role of inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease in the journal JAMA Network Open. Per the abstract, the research objective was “To study the interaction between the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) genotype and chronic low-grade inflammation and its association with the incidence of AD.” Framingham Heart Study data was mined to for subjects who had the ApoE4 gene to examine C-reactive protein levels as an indicator of the amount of body inflammation.
Wendy Qiu, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology and corresponding author of the study, commented in The Globe, “Since many elders have chronic low-grade inflammation after suffering from common diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, pneumonia and urinary tract infection, or after having surgeries, rigorously treating chronic systemic inflammation in ApoE4 carriers could be effective for prevention of Alzheimer’s dementia.”
The study found that, “It is possible that chronic inflammation, rather than 1 episode of inflammation, interacts with genetic vulnerability to increase the risk for AD.” This finding provides an important new insight into the development of Alzheimer’s disease.