When you have delayed onset of Alzheimers by three decades, you say wow, said Dr. Bu, chairman of the neuroscience department at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who was not involved in the study.

He said the research suggests that instead of drugs attacking amyloid or tau, which have failed in many clinical trials, a medication or gene therapy targeting APOE could be promising.

Dr. Reiman, who led another newly published study showing that APOE has a bigger effect on a persons risk of getting Alzheimers than previously thought, said potential treatments could try to reduce or even silence APOE activity in the brain. People born without APOE appear to have no cognitive problems, but they do have very high cholesterol that requires treatment.

Dr. Huang, who co-wrote a commentary about the study and is affiliated with two companies focusing on potential APOE-related treatments, said the findings also challenge a leading Alzheimers theory about the role of amyloid.

Since the woman had huge amounts of amyloid but few other Alzheimers indicators, it actually illustrates, to my knowledge for the first time, a very clear dissociation of amyloid accumulation from tau pathology, neurodegeneration and even cognitive decline, he said.

Dr. Lopera said the woman is just beginning to develop dementia, and he recently disclosed her genetic profile to her four adult children, who each have only one copy of the Christchurch mutation.

The researchers are also evaluating a few other members of the Colombian family, who appear to also have some resistance to Alzheimers. They are not as old as the woman, and they do not have the Christchurch mutation, but the team hopes to find other genetic factors from studying them and examine whether those factors operate along the same or different biological pathways, Dr. Reiman said.

Read more:
Why Didnt She Get Alzheimers? The Answer Could Hold a Key to Fighting the Disease - The New York Times

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