A British study, published in Nature Medicine, suggests that Alzheimer's disease could be transmissible in certain cases. Extractive growth hormone, taken from deceased humans and administered to patients, is in question.
John Collinge's team from the Institute of Prion Diseases at University College London (UCL) examined five patients who had received these hormones before 1985. These individuals were diagnosed with an atypical form of Alzheimer's, linked to this treatment. The UCL study indicates that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), transmitted by growth hormones, led to the death of 4% of 1,849 young British patients treated. Eight patients developed Alzheimer’s disease early. Three died between the ages of 47 and 57 and five are between 54 and 57 years old. The only link between these eight patients was the administration of growth hormones.
This suggests that Alzheimer's could be transmitted like incurable prion diseases, such as CJD. These diseases are characterized by the misfolding of a protein, leading to a chain reaction on cells and damage in the central nervous system. Alzheimer's disease is also characterized by damage caused by a misfolded protein, amyloid beta peptide, and another called Tau.
This study confirms a possible link between these two groups of diseases. For British researchers, the transmission of Alzheimer's would be “iatrogenic” (that is to say caused by a medical procedure), in this case the injection of growth hormones. This suggests that this degenerative disease could be transmissible other than through heredity.
 Pascal Lemontel
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31/01/2024 | 
