{"id":8719,"date":"2017-02-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-alzheimers-david-cassidy-dementia-genetic\/"},"modified":"2017-02-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T00:00:00","slug":"condition-alzheimers-david-cassidy-dementia-genetic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-alzheimers-david-cassidy-dementia-genetic\/","title":{"rendered":"David Cassidy Isn't the First Person in His Family to Battle Dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"
Actor and singer David Cassidy, 66, revealed this week to People<\/em> that he is suffering from dementia<\/a>. His diagnosis comes after he watched his mother “disappear” into the disease until she died at age 89, and after his grandfather struggled with it as well. “I was in denial, but a part of me always knew this was coming," Cassidy said in an interview.<\/p>\n Dementia is a broad term that can refer to many different types of cognitive problems and memory loss, and Cassidy does not specify which type of dementia he has been diagnosed with. But several—including Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type—do tend to run in families. <\/p>\n “You can get dementia from a head injury, a stroke, or an infection in your brain, and these things are usually not going to be genetic,” says Douglas Scharre, MD, director of the Division of Cognitive Neurology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “But most of the degenerative dementias, the kind that occurs over time with age, are very often related to certain genes.” (Dr. Scharre has not treated Cassidy.)<\/p>\n That doesn’t mean, however, that everyone whose mother or father has Alzheimer’s disease will inevitably develop it too. “We think it’s more polygenic—that is, multiple genes might help increase your risk, rather than just one,” says Dr. Scharre. Children can inherit these genes, he says, but it’s rare that parents pass on a 100% chance of developing dementia.<\/p>\n RELATED: 25 Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n “You’re definitely at increased risk, but you can have a family history of Alzheimer’s and never get it yourself,” says Dr. Scharre. “And there are lots of cases in which there’s no family history, and it doesn’t seem to be related to genetics at all.”<\/p>\n When dementia is influenced by genetics, people tend to develop it in the same decade their parents did. Although he doesn’t know the details of Cassidy’s diagnosis or family history, Dr. Scharre says the actor’s relatively young age does suggest a genetic component.<\/p>\n Only about 3% of people between ages 65 and 74<\/a> have dementia, according to a 2016 study in JAMA Internal Medicine<\/em>. For Alzheimer’s disease, people diagnosed under age 65 are considered to have an “early onset.”<\/p>\n