Monday, November 20, 2017

New research about Alzheimer's Disease

    In an article published on ScienceDaily, it discusses new research about Alzheimer's Disease. AD is a neurodegenerative disease that causes significant atrophy, leading to the sufferer to cognitively decline. A mechanism that essentially leads to AD is the build-up of amyloid-beta plaque proteins that latch themselves onto neurons, which blocks off the communication between neurons. Therefore, making it difficult to retrieve certain memories. Researchers have found that the frontal (rostral) region of the brain tends to be affected and damaged by the accumulation of these Aβ proteins while the back (caudal) region tends to be unaffected. Researchers wanted to figure out why the neurons in the rostral region are more vulnerable than other regions in the brain. In their study, researchers used human induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) in patients that had a familial Alzheimer's disease mutation. They were able to find that neuron stem cells in more vulnerable brain regions were more affected by the Aβ proteins than neuron stem cells in protected regions of the brain.
     While it is still unclear why the brain cells in rostral regions of the brain are much more vulnerable to the toxicity of plaque build-up, I believe that this research is still beneficial to researchers to help figure it out. Currently, AD is an untreatable disease, this research will be able to aid researchers in understanding the disease and ultimately figuring out ways to treat it.




1 comment:

  1. Alzheimers is a terrible disease, and just like schizophrenia and other big diseases, there's a lot of research that goes into treating them. It is nice to hear there is more research coming out of the field and new breakthroughs are being made. I look forward to someday *hopefully* this terrible disease is a thing of the past.

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