Is Brain Inflammation Genetic?

Multiple Sclerosis affects over 2.5 million people worldwide, making it one of the most prominent brain inflammatory diseases. Alzheimer's disease is another condition involving brain inflammation. In a person with Alzheimer's disease, a faulty blood-brain barrier prevents glucose from reaching the brain and prevents the clearing away of toxic beta-amyloid and tau proteins, resulting in neuroinflammation that compounds vascular problems in the brain.

If someone in your family has a brain inflammatory condition, you may wonder whether you could be at risk. While some brain inflammatory diseases have a genetic component, predicting your risk is not as simple as drawing a Punnett square.

Read on to learn about the genetic factors behind brain inflammatory diseases.

What Is Brain Inflammation?

Brain inflammation, such as that caused by Multiple Sclerosis, is referred to medically as encephalitis. It is the swelling of the brain due to infection, autoimmune disease, or other causes. Symptoms can include headache, confusion, fever, and in severe cases seizures or loss of consciousness.

Brain inflammation falls broadly into two categories: infectious and autoimmune. Infectious encephalitis is caused by a virus, bacterium, or other pathogen entering the brain. Autoimmune encephalitis occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks brain tissue. The autoimmune variety is the type most closely tied to genetic risk factors.

Is Brain Inflammation Genetic?

Genetics can influence a wide range of characteristics, including resistance to certain diseases, neutral traits like eye color, or heightened risk for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease or other neurodegenerative diseases.

Inflammation that occurs to fight viral infections is not primarily driven by genetics. But other types of encephalitis are. While the precise causes of Multiple Sclerosis and other abnormal inflammation patterns remain unknown, research supports a genetic factor in their development.

Multiple Sclerosis, for example, requires an intricate interaction of specific risk factors. When a genetic predisposition is triggered by a currently unidentified non-genetic factor, Multiple Sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases may develop.

While research continues to identify the specific causes of Multiple Sclerosis, the genetic predisposition for the disease has been well established. Studies show that if an identical twin develops MS, the other twin has a 25% chance of developing it too. For non-identical twins, that risk drops to around 5%. This pattern reflects the role of genetics in MS risk.

Alzheimer's disease also has well documented genetic risk factors. The APOE-e4 gene variant is the strongest known genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's. People who inherit one copy of APOE-e4 have an increased risk, and those who inherit two copies have a significantly higher risk. Other genes, such as TREM2, have also been linked to Alzheimer's risk through neuroinflammatory pathways.

Brain Inflammation and Coronavirus

Research has identified a connection between COVID-19 and brain inflammation. Stanford researchers found signs of inflammation in the brains of people who died from COVID-19, in a comprehensive molecular study of brain tissue from COVID-19 patients versus a control group.

Activation levels of hundreds of genes in all major brain cell types differed between the COVID-19 patients and the control group. Many of these genes are associated with inflammatory processes. There were also signs of distress in neurons in the cerebral cortex, the brain region that plays a key role in decision-making, memory, and reasoning.

These findings may help explain why many COVID-19 patients report neurological problems including memory loss and difficulty concentrating. The research highlights the connection between immune response, neuroinflammation, and genetics.

Brain Inflammation and Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is another factor associated with brain inflammation. Prolonged stress triggers the release of cortisol and other stress hormones. Over time, elevated cortisol can cause inflammation throughout the body, including in the brain. Genetic factors influence how individuals respond to stress and how efficiently their bodies regulate cortisol, which means some people may be more susceptible to stress-related neuroinflammation than others.

DNA Testing for Brain Inflammation

DNA testing can help identify your risk factors for a wide range of conditions, including brain inflammatory diseases. Whole genome sequencing can identify whether you carry risk-factor genes for autoimmune diseases that affect the brain.

Predicting your risk for brain inflammation is not straightforward, since the triggers are largely environmental and not genetic alone. What DNA testing can do is identify whether you carry combinations of risk-factor genes for brain inflammatory diseases like Multiple Sclerosis or Alzheimer's disease, giving you and your healthcare provider more information to work with.

Sequencing offers clinical grade whole genome sequencing that reads 100% of your DNA across all of your over 30,000 genes. Once your data is processed, it is available in your secure account where you can run apps from the Partner Marketplace, including reports on neurological and autoimmune risk factors.

If you already have raw DNA data from another test, you can upload it for free and begin exploring your results right away.

Get Started with DNA Sequencing

Understanding your genetic risk factors for brain inflammation is a meaningful step toward proactive health management. Whether you are concerned about a family history of Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, or other neuroinflammatory conditions, whole genome sequencing from Sequencing gives you the most complete picture of your DNA available.