January 25, 2019.
Researchers around the world are busy trying to counter the consequences of Alzheimer’s disease. It is estimated that with the aging of the population, especially in Western countries, the disease could strike up to one in four elderly people!
Research on age-related memory loss
Latest discovery to date, that of a team of American researchers from the University of Buffalo (State of New York): the memory of Alzheimer’s patients could perhaps one day be restored. For the moment, it is experiments carried out on mice that give us a glimpse of this hope, but it is real.
Scientists have in fact discovered that memory loss in a man with a normal brain was caused by the disappearance of glutamate receptors present on neurons.
The mice have regained their memory
By activating certain enzymes, they succeeded in reactivating these receptors in mice in which they had been inhibited. And so to give these laboratory mice back their memory, in the classic labyrinth test.
Unfortunately, these same researchers found that normal memory loss caused by aging was the result of a mechanism quite distinct from memory loss caused by Alzheimer’s. However, they do not lose hope of learning a lot about the mechanism of memory degeneration, so that they can then imagine therapies adapted to patients with Alzheimer’s.
Jean-Baptiste Giraud
Read also: People and risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease
