Alzheimer's Disease Prevented by Organ Transplant Drugs, Study Suggests

People who have undergone organ transplants are required to medications to prevent organ rejection. A new study has revealed that these anti-rejection drugs also provide protection against Alzheimer's disease.

For the study, the medical records of 2.644 US patients who underwent organ transplants were analysed. Researchers found that only 8 of these patients showed signs of dementia where 2 patients were younger than 65, one was in the 75-84 age group and five were in 65-74 age group.

The data from the research was then compared to the 2014 Alzheimer's Association Facts and Figures dataset.

"These data clearly show that the prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer's in our transplant patient group is significantly lower, in fact almost absent, when compared to national data from the general population," said senior author Luca Cicalese, professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).

"In patients over 65 years, 11 percent of the general population had dementia compared with 1.02 percent of the study subjects. In Americans over 75 years, 15.3 percent of the population had dementia compared with 0.6 percent of the study subjects," Cicalese said.

In a previous research, scientists found that the enzyme calcinuerin plays a crucial role in preventing the effects of certain proteins that could eventually lead to memory impairment.

Patients who have received an organ transplant are required to take calcineurin inhibitor-based medications for life to prevent organ rejection.

"Taken together, our results from these people confirm our notion that calcineurin inhibition has a protective effect on the development and possible progression and even reversal of Alzheimer's disease," senior author professor Giulio Taglialatela from UTMB said.