Alzheimer’s disease may, rarely, be transmitted by medical treatment
Childhood treatment with contaminated human growth hormone may cause the disease years later
RESEARCHERS DIVIDE Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, into two types. “Sporadic” cases usually occur in people over 65. Rarer “familial” ones are associated with a handful of mutations that run in families. Symptoms can begin in a patient’s 30s.
But evidence is mounting that a third, much rarer type exists as well. A paper published on January 29th in Nature Medicine describes five people with early-onset Alzheimer’s who may have contracted it from human growth hormone (HGH) given when they were children. If that is indeed what has happened, it would establish a third “iatrogenic” form of the disease—one that is transmitted by medical procedures.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Can Alzheimer’s be transmitted?"
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