Author Topic: Alzheimer's spreads through your brain like a virus  (Read 4940 times)

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Offline gyeonghwa

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Alzheimer's spreads through your brain like a virus
« on: February 03, 2012, 06:09:51 pm »
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/health/research/alzheimers-spreads-like-a-virus-in-the-brain-studies-find.html?_r=1

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The studies, done independently by researchers at Columbia and Harvard, involved genetically engineered mice that could make abnormal human tau proteins, predominantly in the entorhinal (pronounced en-toh-RYE-nal) cortex, a sliver of tissue behind the ears, toward the middle of the brain, where cells first start dying in Alzheimer’s disease. As expected, tau showed up there. And, as also expected, entorhinal cortex cells in the mice started dying, filled with tangled, spaghettilike strands of tau.

Over the next two years, the cell death and destruction spread outward to other cells along the same network. Since those other cells could not make human tau, the only way they could get the protein was by transmission from nerve cell to nerve cell.

And that, said Dr. Samuel E. Gandy, associate director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, was “very unexpected, very intriguing.”

Although the studies were in mice, researchers say they expect that the same phenomenon occurs in humans because the mice had a human tau gene and the progressive wave of cell death matched what they see in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

The implication is that if Alzheimer's work like a virus in the human brain, then you can try to isolate the damaged cells and prevent them from infecting other cells. However, I wonder how Alzheimer's genetic factors works into this.
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Offline Osama bin Bambi

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Re: Alzheimer's spreads through your brain like a virus
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2012, 08:15:56 pm »
Fascinating. I want to study neuroscience.
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Offline Lithp

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Re: Alzheimer's spreads through your brain like a virus
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2012, 08:53:00 pm »
Fascinating. I want to study neuroscience.

I've thought about it, but it would be heavy on the molecular stuff, which is probably too much math for me.

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