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It is possible to delay Alzheimer's disease by as much as 17 years, say Australian researchers. They have been able to locate genes playing a major role in the disease.

Led by Australian National University  Professor Mauricio Arcos-Burgos, scientists examined a big family of 5,000 living in the western mountains of Columbia.

It was studied due to a hereditary type of Alzheimer's, and its genetic samples were thought to be of special help due to the family links.

Scientists could find a network of nine genes that played a major role in the beginning of the disease. A few of these "accelerated" the disease, while others slowed it down. Scientists also found out by how much the onset could be affected.

"If you can work out how to decelerate the disease, then you can have a profound impact," Arcos-Burgos said in a news release.

In fact, delaying it by even just a year "will mean nine million fewer people have the disease in 2050," he explained.

Researchers could identify the Columbian family's sensitivity to the disease back to a "founder mutation" in a member of the family, who goes back by five centuries. He came to the area then, and the researchers found the nine genes that controlled the onset of the disease.

Australians are now gearing up to analyse the Queanbeyan people in New South Wales, Australia.

The scientists' study was published Dec. 1 in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.