Various changes are seen in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, but the exact cause of the disease is unclearA new understanding of Alzheimer’s disease suggests that the root cause involves a build-up of fat droplets in brain cells.Arguments over which of these two proteins is the key culprit have gone on for decades. The amyloid hypothesis is currently in the lead, as somethat rid the brain of it have recently shown modest effectiveness at slowing memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s.
But this debate ignores the fact that fat droplets can also be seen in the brains of people who have died from the disease, says Haney. These were first described by Alois Alzheimer, a German doctor who gave his name to the condition in the early 20th century, when he noted amyloid plaques, tau tangles and fat droplets present in the brains of people who had Alzheimer’s. But for decades the fat was mostly overlooked.
In a further experiment, the team grew this kind of brain immune cell – called microglia – in a dish, using cells from living people with either theThe team concluded that in Alzheimer’s, a build-up of amyloid triggers fat accumulation. This then leads to the build-up of tau inside neurons, which causes cell death, and so leads to the symptoms of memory loss and confusion.
This means that about 75 per cent of people who get Alzheimer’s wouldn’t do so if we could somehow intervene in this molecular pathway, says Williams. “Given that we’re in a rare position where differences in this one protein seem to be responsible for a large majority of the disease burden, if we design drugs where we could somehow mitigate that risk, we would expect to prevent most disease.”
Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)
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