Alzheimer’s can be transmitted from person to person, discovered after patients who received human hormones decades ago went on to develop the disease.
Five cases of Alzheimer’s are believed to have been caused by medical treatment given as children.
The new study provides the first examples of Alzheimer’s disease in living people to have been ‘caught’ during a medical procedure.
In these cases, it appears to have been due to doctors administering children with a human growth hormone taken from dead donors.
According to the University College London (UCL) and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) researchers, the findings may have important implications for understanding and treating Alzheimer’s disease.
And although the procedure that led to this transmission was stopped in the 1980s, experts recommend medical procedures should be reviewed to ensure rare cases of Alzheimer’s transmission do not happen in the future.
Alzheimer’s, the most common form of Alzheimer’s, is caused by the build-up of the proteins in the brain, and usually occurs later in adult life with no specific family link. More rarely, it can be an inherited condition that occurs due to a faulty gene.
Hellbound and Down 