Science & technology | Down’s and Alzheimer’s

Volunteers with Down’s syndrome could help find Alzheimer’s drugs

Those with the syndrome have more of a protein implicated in dementia

A person holding an X chromosome, with chaotic shapes and letters swirling around their head, transforming into organized data, charts, and patterns projecting outward
Illustration: Keith Negley

Dementia looks likely to dominate old age in the 21st century. A study in this week’s Nature Medicine reckons the number of Americans developing it each year will rise from 500,000 in 2020 to 1m in 2060. And though drugs that have some effect on Alzheimer’s disease, dementia’s most common manifestation, have recently been assessed in America and Britain, not everyone is convinced.

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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Fortune’s wheel”

From the January 18th 2025 edition

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