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The Missing Link To Alzheimer |
| For years, scientists have
known that people with Alzheimer’s disease have protein deposits, called
beta-amyloid protein, in the brain. But researchers didn’t know if
beta-amyloid protein was a cause of the disease, or a by-product. Now, a
recent study suggests that this protein may cause Alzheimer’s.
During the 1960s, Alzheimer’s disease was considered to be a rare disorder. But over the last 30 years, scientists have recognized that it’s fairly common – in fact, Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of age-related dementia. An estimated 4 million Americans currently have Alzheimer’s disease. In rare cases, people begin to develop the disease before age 50. But most people with Alzheimer’s develop the disease after age 60. About 1 in every 10 Americans age 65 and older has Alzheimer’s disease. As the U.S. population ages, by the year 2050 as many as 15 percent of Americans over age 65 might have Alzheimer’s. Which protein does the damage? Alzheimer’s disease is marked by plaques of beta-amyloid in the brain and tangles of a protein called tau inside brain nerve fibers. Scientists disagree about whether beta-amyloid or tau plays a more central role in the destruction of brain cells. And some believe that the protein deposits and tangles are caused by the death of nerve cells killed by an unknown disorder. But the researchers who conducted the recent study believe that beta-amyloid is more likely to cause Alzheimer’s. They found that beta-amyloid protein was deposited in the brain before tau protein could be found in the brain’s frontal cortex. Landmark study For the recently reported study, researchers studied the autopsy results of 63 people who had mild to severe dementia believed to be caused by Alzheimer’s. Researchers also studied the autopsies of 16 mentally healthy people. The researchers found abnormally high beta-amyloid levels even in the people who didn’t suffer from dementia. The study authors said that those people eventually would have developed Alzheimer’s, if they had lived long enough. Doctors who conducted the autopsies on people with mild dementia found that these people already had significant levels of beta-amyloid. But no tangles of tau protein were found in the frontal cortex. The authors say that these findings suggest that beta-amyloid is a cause of Alzheimer’s. The recent study is the first to show that the amount of beta-amyloid plaque accumulated in the brain was related to the level of dementia. Stages of Alzheimer’s disease Barry Reisberg, M.D., and colleagues at the New York University Medical Center’s Aging and Dementia Research Center have developed the Functional Assessment Staging (FAST) scale. The FAST scale allows medical professionals and caregivers to chart the decline of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
If you have any questions about your health or your family’s health, visit our What is Alzheimer’s disease? Copyright 2000 AmericasDoctor.com Inc. All rights reserved. Reviewed by Dan Morhaim, M.D. April 2000 |
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| Revised:
December 30, 2007
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