UC San Diego

Primates rely on memory to navigate both physical and social environments and in humans, loss of memory function leads to devastating consequences. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease which begins by impacting memory functioning and is ultimately fatal. AD is common across human populations and its prevalence is predicted to rise with increases in the aging population. Despite this, the full AD phenotype has not been observed in any other nonhuman primate species. While a significant amount of research has been devoted to understanding the immediate mechanisms involved in AD pathogenesis in humans, less research has focused on why humans are particularly vulnerable to neurodegenerative diseases like AD. Here we explore hypotheses on the evolution of distinct human susceptibility to AD and place these in the context of findings from comparative neuroanatomical and molecular studies and discuss recent evidence for evolutionary changes protective against AD in the primate lineage.