Under very rare conditions, Alzheimer’s disease may be transmitted

Five patients who got tainted growth hormone injections developed early Alzheimer’s decades later

An image of a brain scan with glowing purple and orange spots that mark amyloid-beta.

High levels of the protein amyloid-beta — a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — appear orange and purple in this brain scan of a man with the disease. Childhood exposure to the protein via contaminated growth hormone injections may have led the man to develop Alzheimer’s later in life.

G. Banerjee et al/Nature Medicine 2024

Under extremely rare circumstances, it appears that Alzheimer’s disease can be transmitted between people.