A new clue to the cause of Alzheimer’s disease (brain disorder named for German physician Alois Alzheimer in 1906) seems to have been discovered by a team led by Dr. Ganesh M. Shankar and Dr. Dennis J. Selkoe of Harvard Medical School. Scientists long have been of the opinion that the brains of people inflicted with this memory-robbing form of dementia are jumbled with a plaque (these build up between nerve cells) made up of beta-amyloid and with tau (tangles are twisted fibers of a protein called tau).
If you are wondering what is that these researchers have done, well they have caused Alzheimer’s symptoms in rats by injecting them with one particular form (two-molecule form) of beta-amyloid. Surprisingly, injections with other forms (insoluble plaque or the soluble one-molecule or three-molecule forms) of beta-amyloid did not cause Alzheimer’s. This indeed is an important observation because it perhaps explains why some people in spite of having beta-amyloid plaque in their brains, are not affected with this most common form of dementia (it is the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States).
I am sure this new finding will help to solve the puzzle that is Alzheimer’s a little more. One hopes, that in the near future we will be able to find a cure to this progressive and fatal brain disease.
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Via:Wired