Research has pointed out that the risk of Alzheimer's increases among those whose parents suffered the disease.

Now, scientists have found the likely basis for this heightened familial risk-especially from the maternal side.

As a part of an international collaboration, led by Lisa Mosconi, PhD, Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, with her team of researchers, devised a new technique of brain scanning, and discovered that there was a greater number of protein clumps linked to the Alzheimer’s among children of parents who suffer from Alzheimer's as compared to the ones with no family history of the disease.

The new findings can open the doors to the question as to why a person’s family history linkage with Alzheimer’s disease is the one of the biggest risk factor than those with no family history of dementia.

“At this point, we can only speculate that genes that are transmitted from parents, particularly mothers, to their children lead to amyloid depositions, which increase risk for developing dementia”, says Professor Mosconi.

The details of the study can be found in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ online edition.