Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have studied the incidence and regional distribution of Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers in the brains of people with Down’s syndrome. The results can bring new possibilities for earlier diagnosis and preventive treatment of dementia. The study is published in Molecular Neurodegeneration.

In the current study, the researchers studied the extent and distribution of tau and amyloid in the brain tissue of people with Down’s syndrome with or without an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and of people who had died with Alzheimer’s disease but without any other functional disability.

Their analyses showed that the incidence of tau in the brain tissue of people with Down’s syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease was higher than in people with Alzheimer’s but without Down’s syndrome, suggesting that tau is an early change in Down’s syndrome.