Are We Getting Alzheimer’s Wrong?

[oneh2obabe]

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — By examining more than 3,600 postmortem brains, researchers at Mayo Clinic’s campuses in Jacksonville, Florida, and Rochester, Minnesota, have found that the progression of dysfunctional tau protein drives the cognitive decline and memory loss seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid, the other toxic protein that characterizes Alzheimer’s, builds up as dementia progresses, but is not the primary culprit, they say.

The findings, published in Brain, offer new and valuable information in the long and ongoing debate about the relative contribution of amyloid and tau to the development and progression of cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer’s, says the study’s lead author, Melissa Murray, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville.

The findings also suggest that halting toxic tau should be a new focus for Alzheimer’s treatment, the researchers say.

“The majority of the Alzheimer’s research field has really focused on amyloid over the last 25 years,” Dr. Murray says. “Initially, patients who were discovered to have mutations or changes in the amyloid gene were found to have severe Alzheimer’s pathology — particularly in increased levels of amyloid. Brain scans performed over the last decade revealed that amyloid accumulated as people progressed, so most Alzheimer’s models were based on amyloid toxicity. In this way, the Alzheimer’s field became myopic.”

But researchers at Mayo Clinic were able to simultaneously look at the evolution of amyloid and tau using neuropathologic measures. “Imagine looking at the rings of a tree — you can identify patterns, like the changing seasons and the aging of the tree, when viewing the tree’s cross-section,” Dr. Murray says. “Studying brains at different stages of Alzheimer’s gives us a perspective of the cognitive impact of a wide range of both amyloid and tau severity, and we were very fortunate to have the resource of the Mayo brain bank, in which thousands of people donated their postmortem brains, that have allowed us to understand the changes in tau and amyloid that occur over time.”

Full article with video
http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discu ... s-disease/

[rustled]

That could be huge. Thanks for posting it.

[Bsuds]

Let's hope it leads to treatment that works or even a cure!