A team from The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth (UNTHSC), in partnership with the Texas Alzheimer’s Research and Care Consortium, has published key study results in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Ann Abraham Daniel, a graduate of UNTHSC’s College of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, was the lead author of the article, “Hypermethylation at CREBBP is Associated with Cognitive Impairment in a Mexican American Cohort,” which was published in the April 2023 issue of the journal.
“Like all researchers, we were hoping for the best, but the very fact that there were some significant results that we saw was very exciting,” Abraham Daniel said. “Our whole hypothesis is that environmental factors play a role in cognitive findings in different groups.”
Working directly with Dr. Robert Barber, a professor in UNTHSC’s Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Dr. Nicole Phillips, an assistant professor in UNTHSC’s CBTS, the team used DNA methylation patterns among about 300 Mexican American and about 250 non-Hispanic white participants enrolled in the consortium. These participants had a clinical diagnosis of normal cognition or cognitive impairment − mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease. The study showed a strong association between cognitive impairment and DNA methylation in the CREB Binding Protein gene among Mexican American participants.
The CREBBP gene provides instructions for making CREB-binding protein, which regulates the activity of many genes in tissues throughout the body. Mutations in CREBBP are known to cause Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome, the symptoms of which include cognitive dysfunction.
“We are hoping in the future that we can give ethnic risk profiles that can help Mexican Americans know their risk for Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive impairment,” Barber said. “They are the fastest-aging segment of the U.S. population that develops Alzheimer’s disease at a younger age, and if we don’t have any more knowledge or treatments, we are going to be in trouble.”
Approximately 5.8 million people in the U.S. live with Alzheimer’s disease – the sixth-leading cause of death in the country, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. It is estimated that 500,000 new cases of the disease are diagnosed in the U.S. annually.
These results are currently being expanded and replicated in samples collected from participants enrolled in Dr. Sid O’Bryant’s Health & Aging Brain Study − Health Disparities. O’Bryant, executive director of UNTHSC’s Institute for Translational Research and a TCOM professor, received a five-year, $148.78 million grant in October 2022 to conduct the first-ever large-scale study of the biology of Alzheimer’s disease within a health disparities framework across the three largest racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. – African American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white.
“We are excited about the potential of the ongoing work because the Healthy Aging Brain Study − Health Disparities cohort has several significant advantages,” Barber said. “These include a larger and more diverse sample, and the collection of a much wider array of data that include amyloid and tau PET scans, whole genome sequencing and DNA methylation profiles. With these additional data types and broader participant diversity, the potential for additional discoveries is great. This is really exciting and a big honor for Ann.”
The paper is the first first-author publication for Abraham Daniel, who graduated from UNTHSC in May 2023 and used data from Phillips’ lab for the paper. She is now working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, and her research is still within the Alzheimer’s disease field.
To request the full text of the article or for more information, contact Diana Murray, IOS Press, 718-640-5678 or d.murray@iospress.com. To learn more about the Healthy Aging Brain Study − Health Disparities study, call 817-735-2963.