April 4, 2013
Mounting evidence points to brain trauma as a risk factor for mental decline. Football players who’ve had multiple concussions perform worse on tests of brain function and are more likely to have memory problems later on. Repeated blows to the head can also cause certain types of dementia -- medically [...]
October 24, 2012
This past summer researchers announced they’d discovered a rare genetic variant that may be protective against Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is an important topic among 23andMe customers so naturally they asked for more information about the variant. After a review of the research, we recently [...]
September 21, 2012
In honor of World Alzheimer’s Day, we’re linking to a few posts and stories about the disease. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia and affects more than 35 million people worldwide. 23andMe first began allowing customers to learn about their genetic risk for late-onset [...]
May 16, 2012
An editorial in today’s Science Translational Medicine about traumatic brain injuries, genetics and the long-term risks for degenerative brain disease caught our eye. According to the authors, the suicide of former star NFL linebacker Junior Seau, a death that mirrored other suicides of former NFL [...]
February 16, 2012
By David Hinds, Chuong Do, and Shirley Wu In January we wrote about the challenging search for genetic influences on human longevity, touching on two of the most recent studies as examples of how elusive solid findings have been. Because one of these studies was a new version of a paper that was previously [...]
May 11, 2010
Understanding Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia in people 65 years and older, is of the utmost importance as the population of the United States (and many other nations) becomes increasingly older. Currently more than five million Americans are thought to have the disease, but by the [...]
September 8, 2009
Despite years of effort and millions of dollars in research funding, only one gene, APOE, has been conclusively associated with Alzheimer's disease risk so far. But now the results of two of the largest Alzheimer's studies ever provide convincing evidence that three more genes affect risk for the [...]
