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FYI - Alzheimer's Disease Symptoms Reversed in Mice
Mice with memory loss have had their condition reversed, a discovery that should help refine the search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.
The study also helps clarify the actual cause of dementia, which should give more focus to drug studies. The brains of people with Alzheimer's and some 50 other forms of dementia are known to have certain characteristic features, including messy bundles of fibers in nerve cells called neurofibrillary tangles. But no one has been sure whether the tangles are a cause or symptom of dementia. Mice engineered to massively overproduce a protein called tau tend to grow more of the tangles and display the same problems with memory and learning as humans with dementia. Researchers think that it is a certain version of the tau protein, rather than a simple over-abundance, that leads to the tangles. It has been speculated that these tau proteins, rather than the tangles, kill nerve cells. Turning off the expression of tau proteins reversed symptoms of dementia in the mice.
Source: Nature (July 14, 2005)
We will have a guest speaker at the Fall Summit 2005 to educate members regarding many of the intricacies of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease and how to assist people with these conditions in our practices.
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