SCOTTISH HOSPITAL NEWS
EARLY SIGNS OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE IDENTIFIED
DELIVERING INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS
Researchers from the University of Aberdeen have detected key changes in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The study confirmed for the first time that two molecules assumed to contribute to the disease process are both present at very early stages of Alzheimer’s in an area of the brain that is involved in memory formation and information processing.
This research, funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK, will have implications for the development of new drugs, but may also provide important information for diagnosis of the disease and in the post-mortem pathology of tissues.
The team, led by Dr David Koss and Professor Bettina Platt, used human brain samples provided by the ‘Brains for Dementia Research’ platform to investigate changes in the brain at different stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Specifically, the researchers developed novel ways to study two proteins (tau and amyloid), both associated with Alzheimer’s disease, and determined how each one contributed to the onset, progression and symptoms of the disease.
Previous research had suggested that the two proteins initially emerge in separate brain regions but these results published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica show for the first time that both proteins
are present in the very early stages of the disease in the same brain region, which suggests that they both contribute to the disease process and are more connected than previously recognised.
‘In the field of Alzheimer’s and dementia research there has been a long-running battle regarding the two main suspects that might cause brain cells to die - tau and amyloid,’ said Professor Platt. ‘These two have never been brought together in human cases, and the relationship between them has not been clear. Our observations therefore consolidate conflicting evidence from other studies on the role of the proteins in the disease process and strongly support a notion of an early stage interaction between the two.
‘It has long been assumed that Alzheimer’s-related changes within the brain occur long before symptoms are evident, but so far reliable methods to detect these were elusive. However, we have managed to modify experimental procedures in a way that we can now very sensitively determine when and where these proteins appear, and the big surprise was that they both appear together very early on, and in the same brain area. In doing so, we have established a new benchmark for pathological investigations. Therefore, a long- standing puzzle in the field of dementia research has now been resolved to a large extent.’
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02/02/2016 12:31
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