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Alzheimer Could Originate From Infection Fighting Protein

May 27, 2016 By Robert Benson Leave a Comment

Amyloid Beta Protein. Alzheimer Could Originate From This Infection Fighting Protein

Could Alzheimer disease, a form of dementia that accounts for almost 70% of all the cases of dementia arise from the contaminated remains of infections?

The research of a team of Harvard investigators led to the hypothesis that even mild infections could leave debris in the brain and cause people to develop Alzheimer. This would explain the mysterious plaques that form in the sufferers’ brains.

Although it is not yet confirmed, the idea makes sense to many Alzheimer experts. The study was published Wednesday, May 25th in the journal Science Translational Medicine and if the research holds up, it will have incredible implications for treating and preventing the degenerating disease.

The scenario seems ripped from the sci-fi books: a pathogen, be it a virus or bacteria, enters the brain, passes through the blood-brain membrane and starts attacking. But the brain’s immune system instantly creates a beta amyloid protein cage to trap the invader.

The bug caught in the beta-amyloid web then slowly dies off. The problem seems to be that these minuscule protein traps are not discarded. They’re probably Alzheimer’s hallmark plaques.

The bug trap hypothesis has been confirmed in lab work on neurons engineered in Petri dishes with fruit flies, mice, roundworms, and yeast. Finding similar sequence in humans is the next step. Funding and plans are set for a multicenter program where human brains will be examined.

Doctor Michael Weiner, a radiology professor and principal investigator at the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative said these results are “interesting and provocative.” The California center where the doctor works represents a national effort to track biomarkers of dementia (like blood proteins) and brain signals that warn about the presence of the Alzheimer disease.

This particular study began when doctor Robert Moir of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital had the idea to study amyloid, a normal brain protein who’s role was not clear until recently.

Scientists considered amyloid to be trash accumulating in the aging brain, but Dr. Moir noticed it looked like proteins from the immune system’s first line of defense. Studying how living animals react with and without it, the team discovered mice without it would be ravaged by infection and mice with it, would have the infectious microbe confined.

There’s now new hope for Alzheimer disease to be cured, but “big, big” steps are still to be made.

Image source: Wikimedia

The Health Benefits a Friendship can Bring

January 9, 2016 By Dustin Smith Leave a Comment

Having a friend can keep you healthy.

From the die we are born until the day we die, we make bonds. Some are stronger and can last for a lifetime and some are weak and can end very shortly. Everybody knows that having friends is important, but in this time when people talk more with their virtual friends on social media than with their actual friends, concerns have been raising that people don’t value the friendships in their lives as they did in the past. In order to remind you the importance of friendship, here are the health benefits a friendship can bring.

First of all, having friends can increase your lifespan. Studies have shown that people who are isolated die earlier than the people who have strong friendships. A study conducted in 2012 revealed that friendship is more influential than exercising on your lifespan. People who have friends and are well integrated in their community are linked to a decreased mortality. The researchers explained that when people isolate themselves and are stressed, the stress can put its toll on their health. When people have friends and experience high levels of stress, they can share it with them and the friends can come up with solutions and decrease the levels of stress.

Having friends can also keep you from developing dementia. Studies have shown that the loneliness for the old people was associated with higher risk of developing dementia. The perceived lack of social bonding is registered by the brain and it can push the cognitive decline.

Sometimes when people enter new relationships, they tend to ignore their friends. The issue is that friends can stay with you forever, while many relationships come and go. Friends can help you when you break up or when the person you like rejects you. A study done in 2011 showed that kids coped better with rejection, when they had friends.

Your friends can be some sort of support group, that go with you through the good and through the bad. In 1989, a study’s finding were published and showed that the women who suffered from breast cancer lived longer than the patients who did not attend a support group’s meetings. In 2014 another study of the kind was done, this time on men who suffered from prostate cancer and the study showed the same benefic effects on the men.

These are only a few of the health benefits a friendship can bring. So the next time you find yourself alone, in front of the TV, pick up your phone, call your friend, go out and make your friendships your priorities. It will be worth it.

Image Source: www.pixabay.com

Alzheimer’s Disease Could be Treated with Cancer Drug

October 6, 2015 By Adam Martin Leave a Comment

Alzheimer’s disease and dementia could soon be treated by using a drug that is typically administered in treating cancer.

Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating impairment of one’s memory, affecting the ability to process ideas, leading to memory loss and motor function. It’s difficult to treat Alzheimer’s patients once the neurodegenerative disease settles in.

Yet, the new research indicates that there might be hope that the cancer drug, known as RGFP966 could help better the prospects of Alzheimer’s patients. For now, the research has been conducted on rats and several clinical trials should be performed before any results are published.

The paper featuring in the Journal of Neuroscience and co-authored by Kasia M. Bieszczad, Ph.D. and assistant professor at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine describes how the histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDAC) affected the rats.

The drug used in cancer therapies had a surprising effect on the rats’ abilities to focus, to remember information and form memories, as well as to develop new bridges that allowed the information to be transmitted between brain cells.

Alzheimer’s is so debilitating due to the fact that the bridges or synapses that are responsible for transferring information from one neuron to the other become unstable and weak. As such, brain cells are constantly shrinking and dying. The effect of the HDAC was surprising in the sense that it helped the neurons become more flexible, recreated synapses and positively affected memory.

During the research, the rats were trained to listen to one sound. In return, they would receive a reward. For some rats, the reward was the RGFP966. In their case the research team observed that following training they had learned the practice correctly and responded to the specific sound more often than the rats who were given a simple treat.

According to the research team, the rats that were administered the cancer drug were evaluated to be more ‘tuned in’ to the specific sounds heard in their training period. This indicates that the drug enhanced the rats’ ability to store those sounds in a more effective manner. For humans, forming this type of memories is crucial for language and speech.

As a result of better storing the sounds and responding correctly to them, the rats were aided in created new ways of access and reorganizing their routes, indicating again that long-term memory was established more effectively.

Overall, the research findings suggest that the RGFP966 drug could become a prop in treating Alzheimer’s disease and dementia due to its ability to aid with keeping neurons alive and creating new memories.

However, once clinical trials begin, the researchers will test it for a multitude of applications. These would range from aiding people with speech impairment after an accident, or people who present delayed language learning.

Photo Credits: Pixabay

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