Update on drug testing

Update on drug testing - as you know from earlier posts I was not suitable for the drug trial due to not having the propensity for developing excess Beta-Amyloid in the brain. The research company Re:cognition contacted me several weeks ago to ask if I would be willing to go for genetic testing. There is a link between the APOE4 gene and Alzheimers and they want to monitor people who have this gene to see if they develop Alzheimers. So a few weeks ago I had a DNA and I got the results yesterday.
Basically we all have the APOE gene and there are three versions of this APOE2, APOE3 and APOE4 (I do not know what happened to APOE1!!). If you have a single copy of APOE4 the genetic risk of getting Alzheimers increases by 25%, if you have two copies it increases by 55%). Understand that with genetic risk factors it does not mean that you will get the disease and if you genetic risk is 0% you can still get it - it is just one of the factors that can cause it.
Anyway the result of my test shows that I have the APOE3 gene (not the APOE4) so that genetic risk is 0% in my case. It also means that my children cannot get the APOE4 gene from me - so they cannot have two copies of the gene as you can only get one copy (max) from each of your parents.
So that is good news, it doesn't mean that I cannot get Alzheimers but the chances are considerably reduced. I can of course get another form of dementia - but so far so good!

Who knows what tomorrow will bring..............