A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland found that the PLCG2-P522R genetic variant, which protects against Alzheimer’s disease, enhances several key functions of immune cells. The results obtained in the study highlight the importance of immune cells as a target of future development of new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia with more than 40 million affected people worldwide.
To this day, there are no existing therapies for the effective prevention or treatment of the disease. Many recently identified Alzheimer’s disease-associated risk genes are expressed preferentially or exclusively in microglia, the immune cells of the brain.
