There is perhaps nothing scarier than slowly losing all your memories, except maybe that
the process might start at a much younger age than you might think[a][b].
Hey guys, Amy with you on DNews today.
Scientists don’t totally understand what causes Alzheimer's disease, but ongoing research
has uncovered that its onset is rooted in a complex series of events that take place
in the brain over a long period of time.
Contributing factors include genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, but because everyone
is genetically different and lives a different life, preventing the onset of Alzheimer’s
varies from person to person.
One hallmark of Alzheimer’s is Amyloid.
Amyloid is an abnormal protein usually produced in the bone marrow and can sometimes be deposited
in other tissues and organs and it has been found to accumulate in clumps outside neurons
in older adults as well as in Alzheimer’s patients.
These clumps typically damage and eventually kill memory-related neurons because when neurons
are exposed to these kind of clumps, it triggers an excess leakage of calcium into the cells
that kills them.
The clumps can also secrete amyloid outside the cell, leading to the plaque buildup that’s
commonly associated with Alzheimer’s.
It turns out that that Amyloid buildup starts far earlier in life than scientists thought.
This finding comes from a new study led by Changiz Geula, a research professor at Northwestern
University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
For the study, the team was interested in the neurons in the basal forebrain closely
involved in memory and attention, to try to understand why they can be damaged early and
why they tend to be the first to die.
They examined these neurons in the brains of three groups of deceased individuals: cognitively
normal young people between 20 to 66; non-demented older people between 70 to 99; and individuals
affected by Alzheimer's between 60 to 95.
They found that the amyloid molecules weren’t present exclusively in Alzheimer’s patients,
they were present in normal young adults as well.
Once present, the amyloid molecules can continue to grow over the course of an individual’s
lifetime, ultimately growing to be quite large in older individuals and those with Alzheimer’s.
It explains why these neurons die early; the lifelong accumulation of toxic amyloid likely
contributes to their vulnerability in both natural aging and loss in Alzheimer’s.
Geula and his team plan to investigate how internal amyloid damages the neurons as the
next stage of their research.
So it’s a small step, but hopefully their research can someday lead to other science
that brings us closer to prevention or a cure.[c][d]
So does this new discovery make you more or less concerned about developing Alzheimer’s?[g][h]
Let us know in the comments below or you find me and tell me on Twitter as @astVintageSpace.
And be sure to come back here for more DNews every day of the week.