According to the new study from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, an insufficient supply of sugar glucose, transported by blood, sets off a process that produces the sticky clumps of protein, which is a major cause of the memory robbing disease.
"This finding is significant because it suggests that improving blood flow to the brain might be an effective therapeutic approach to prevent or treat Alzheimer's," said lead author of the study, Robert Vassar, a professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Vassar and colleagues used human and mice brains to study how a reduction in blood flow deprives energy to the brain. After analyzing the human and mice brains, they found that a protein called elF2alpha is altered when the brain does not get enough energy.
This augments production of an enzyme that in turn flips a switch to produce the sticky protein clumps, called amyloid plaques, which form outside neurons and disrupt their ability to send messages. The enzyme, called BACE 1, may be a protective response in the short term, but harmful over the long term, Vassar said.
"What we are talking about here is a slow, insidious process over many years where people have a low level of cardiovascular disease or atherosclerosis in the brain," he said. "It's so mild, they don't even notice it, but it has an effect over time because it's producing a chronic reduction in the blood flow."
A simple preventive strategy people can follow to improve blood flow to the brain is getting exercise, reducing cholesterol and managing hypertension.
Vassar and his colleagues, who reported their findings in the Dec. 26 issue of the journal Neuron, say further experiments are required to establish if blocking the pathway could be used as a therapeutic approach to prevent and treat Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer’s is an incurable neurological disorder where a person slowly and progressively starts losing his memory due to gradual loss of brain cells. It is the most common form of dementia (loss of intellectual ability) in the elderly and is the fourth leading cause of deaths in adults according to National Institute of Health (NIH).
Alzheimer's affects almost half of all patients with dementia. The most striking early symptom of Alzheimer’s is loss of short term memory. As the disorder progresses, cognitive injury extends to the domains of language (aphasia), skilled movements (apraxia), recognition (agnosia), and those functions, such as decision-making and planning, closely related to the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.
It is the third most costly disease in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer
define. According to the Alzheimer's Association, nearly 4.5 million people in the United States currently suffer from the illness. And, according to the latest statistics, there are about 24 million people with dementia worldwide.
It has been projected by the World Health Organization that by 2040, the number of people suffering from AD will increase to 81 million.
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