Study Links Shared Down Syndrome and Alzheimer’s Disease Protein with Cataracts in Ds

Our news section has included items such as  How Down syndrome is teaching us about aging and Study with Down syndrome cells identifies a new key factor related to Alzheimer’s disease.  These articles describe the shared pathologies between Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease(AD).  The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease is 3-5 times greater in people with Down syndrome than in the general population, and by the age of fifty, virtually all persons with Down syndrome show the pathology of AD.

In a recently published journal article, the authors describe how the protein precursor, beta amyloid, known to form deposits in the brain in persons with AD and Ds, can also accumulate in the eyes of patients with Down syndrome, causing the cataracts know to be prevalent in persons with Ds.
The study identified that this beta amyloid pathology is a shared cause of cataracts in the lens and AD neuropathology in the brain, two defining features of Ds.
An especially interesting outcome of this research is that the development of an eye scanner to measure this precursor protein accumulation may provide a means for early detection and monitoring of the related pathology in the brain. 
As a co-author of this study, Dr. Lee E. Goldstein, associate professor at Boston University School of Medicine, noted, availability of such detection methods would be signifant because “Effective treatments for the brain disease in Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease are on the horizon, and early detection is the key for successful intervention.”