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CUHK to Build "Brain Tissue Bank for Chinese"
The faculty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is actively taking steps to establish the world's first "Brain Tissue Bank for Chinese" to promote the study of the pathology, aetiology and genetics of the senile dementia among Chinese, the university announced on Wednesday, November 29.
Since the availability of post-mortem materials and brain tissues are vital for the understanding of dementia, the Brain Disease Laboratory of the CUHK has been collecting post-mortem tissues from brains of Chinese patients for years and formed the "Brain Tissues for Chinese," the first of its kind in the world, researchers at the university said.
After studying the brains of about 70 demented elderly Chinese patients in details, the Brain Disease Laboratory found that Alzheimer's decease, a common form of senile dementia, makes up about two thirds of cases and vascular dementia about one third, while Lewy body disease that is quite common in the west, is not commonly encountered.
In the studies of the CUHK medical faculty, among the clinical samples, 60 percent to 70 percent of the patients with Alzheimer's disease carry at least one ApoE4 gene. Among post-mortem samples, the prevalence of one E4 gene among Alzheimer's disease is 10 times that of the normal controls.
Meanwhile, the Department of Psychiatry of CUHK has conducted the first and only study on the prevalence of dementia in Hong Kong. A community sample of 1034 elderly were interviewed.
It was found that 4 percent of people aged 65 or above and 6 percent of those aged 70 or above suffered from moderate to severe dementia. The common case is Alzheimer's disease, accounting for two-thirds of the cases, while those of a low educational level had a higher rate of dementia.
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