• Posted April 10, 2025

Fathers With Alzheimer's Might Pass Down The Disease, Study Says

THURSDAY, April 10, 2025 (HealthDay News) --  Having a father with Alzheimer’s disease could put you at risk for brain changes linked to the degenerative disorder, a new study says.

People whose fathers fell prey to Alzheimer’s had a greater spread of tau proteins in their brain, according to findings published in the journal Neurology.

Toxic tau tangles in the brain are a hallmark of advanced Alzheimer’s dementia.

Up to now, it’s typically been believed that any genetic risk for Alzheimer’s is passed along by mothers with the disease rather than fathers, researchers noted.

“We were surprised to see that people with a father with Alzheimer’s were more vulnerable to the spread of tau in the brain, as we had hypothesized that we would see more brain changes in people with affected mothers,” senior researcher Sylvia Villeneuve, said in a news release. She is research chair in early detection of Alzheimer’s disease at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

For the study, researchers looked at 243 people with a family history of Alzheimer’s who had no thinking or memory problems themselves by an average age of 68. The team defined family history as one or both parents with the disease, or at least two siblings with the disease.

Participants underwent brain scans and cognitive testing at the outset, and then during an average follow-up of nearly seven years.

During the follow-up period, 71 people developed mild cognitive impairment, which is an early sign of potential Alzheimer’s.

People who had a father with Alzheimer’s had a greater spread of tau protein in their brains, researchers found.

Further, those with more tau in their brains also experienced greater cognitive decline if they had a father with Alzheimer’s, results show.

Overall, women tended to have heavier buildup of tau in their brains, “suggesting that women are more susceptible to the spread of…tau,” researchers wrote.

“This suggests that female sex is more strongly associated with late-stage tau accumulation, aligning with previous findings of faster cognitive decline in female patients with Alzheimer’s disease once impairment begins,” says an accompanying editorial co-written by Lyduine Collij, a postdoctoral fellow in the Clinical Memory Research Unit at Lund University in Sweden.

“Better understanding these vulnerabilities could help us design personalized interventions to help protect against Alzheimer’s disease,” study author Villeneuve said.

The findings were published April 9.

More information

The National Institutes on Aging has more about brain changes in Alzheimer’s disease.

SOURCE: American Academy of Neurology, news release, April 9, 2025