A four-week course of low doses of a drug normally used in transplant medicine to prevent organ rejection significantly boosted blood flow to the brain in people carrying a risky variant of the APOE4 gene. The strongest effect was seen in women, infohub.kz reports.
Researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia reached the conclusion. The results of the clinical trial were published in the scientific journal Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, ScienceDaily writes.
The research team was led by Ai-Ling Lin, a professor at the university's School of Medicine who works at the Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health center. The authors focused on the APOE4 gene variant, a key genetic risk factor for an incurable neurodegenerative disease. In carriers of this mutation, reduced blood flow in brain tissue begins many years before memory problems appear.
The pilot study involved healthy volunteers aged 45 to 65. Participants were divided into two groups — APOE4 carriers and people without the mutation — and all of them took low doses of the medication daily for four weeks. Scanning showed a marked improvement in cerebral blood flow only in carriers of the risk variant, while no changes were observed in the second group.
The most pronounced positive vascular response was recorded in women carrying the APOE4 mutation. The scientists call this fact extremely important for personalized medicine, since women make up about two-thirds of all patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease worldwide.
The authors stress that the work does not yet answer the question of whether the drug can fully prevent memory loss in the long term. Nevertheless, normalizing blood supply opens a promising avenue for early preventive therapy in genetically vulnerable people.