Posted on 06/07/2009 12:19:24 PM PDT by Schnucki
Scientists have discovered how Alzheimer's spreads from one area of the brain to another, paving the way for possible new treatments.
Using mice, research found that healthy rodents injected with brain tissue from affected animals went on to develop the same defect themselves.
Tau tangles, one of two protein abnormalities found in Alzheimer's patients, were seen to spread through the brains of the injected mice.
In Alzheimer's tau tangles form inside nerve cells, first destroying cells critical to memory, before then going on to damage other parts of the brain.
Reporting in the journal Nature Cell Biology, the scientists from Britain, Germany and Switzerland, wrote: "The present findings demonstrate transmission of tauopathy between transgenic mouse lines."
Study leader Dr Michel Goedert, from the Medical Research Council laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, made it clear however that they was no suggestion Alzheimer's was contagious.
"The injection of brain extract from tangle-bearing mice into animals without tangles caused their tau to tangle, and spread from the sites of injection to neighbouring brain regions," he said.
"This opens new avenues in dementia research that will aim to understand how abnormal tau can spread. We can also investigate how diseases caused by tau aggregates and prions are similar.
"This research in mice does not show that tau pathology is contagious or that it can spread easily from mouse to mouse. What it has revealed is how tau tangles spread within brain tissues of individual mice."
The scientists compared the spread of tau tangles to "rogue" prion proteins believed to be the cause of CJD.
Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "This greater understanding of how tangles spread in Alzheimer's may lead to new ways of stopping them and defeating the disease.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Health/science ping.
Great news!
Always wash your brain after contact with other brains.
So Alzheimer’s is contagious?
What’s it a ‘prion’ now? Veggie ping ...
for later
Thank you!
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Though it was very clear that they didn’t want to spread the idea that Alzheimer’s might be contagious, they may have been premature to dismiss the idea.
March 28, 2009: Prions complicit in Alzheimer’s disease
And don't share needles you and other people use to inject things into your brain.
One uh them there hybridized cars?
Intracellular tau inclusions, a hallmark of several neurodegenerative diseases, propagate in the brain in an unknown fashion. Brain extracts prepared from mice expressing mutated human tau injected into mice expressing wild-type human tau induce the formation and spread of wild-type human tau inclusions.
Transmission and spreading of tauopathy in transgenic mouse brain
Hyperphosphorylated tau makes up the filamentous intracellular inclusions of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease1. In the disease process, neuronal tau inclusions first appear in the transentorhinal cortex from where they seem to spread to the hippocampal formation and neocortex2. Cognitive impairment becomes manifest when inclusions reach the hippocampus, with abundant neocortical tau inclusions and extracellular -amyloid deposits being the defining pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. An abundance of tau inclusions, in the absence of -amyloid deposits, defines Pick's disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal degeneration and other diseases1. Tau mutations cause familial forms of frontotemporal dementia, establishing that tau protein dysfunction is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration and dementia3, 4, 5. Thus, transgenic mice expressing mutant (for example, P301S) human tau in nerve cells show the essential features of tauopathies, including neurodegeneration and abundant filaments made of hyperphosphorylated tau protein6, 8. By contrast, mouse lines expressing single isoforms of wild-type human tau do not produce tau filaments or show neurodegeneration7, 8. Here we have used tau-expressing lines to investigate whether experimental tauopathy can be transmitted. We show that injection of brain extract from mutant P301S tau-expressing mice into the brain of transgenic wild-type tau-expressing animals induces assembly of wild-type human tau into filaments and spreading of pathology from the site of injection to neighbouring brain regions.
Is it possible that Alzheimer’s could turn out to be caused by some infectious agent (prion??). This is making me think of how ulcers are caused by Heliobacter and some cervical cancers by papilloma virus. Why wouldn’t Alzheimer’s be caused by something infectious?
Or am I hypothesizing too much?
Not really. A lot of people chronically sick with diseases like Mono or Lyme possibly have symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s.
I pray for their success. It's a horrible disease for those suffering from it, and for their families who suffer watching them go through it.
Nah, that's the 'Pious' ;o)
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