Five years are needed for the number of toxic proteins responsible for Alzheimer’s disease to double in the brain.
- Today, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common neurodegenerative disease.
- Each year, 225,000 new cases are recorded.
5 years. For the first time, researchers have been able to assess how quickly tau proteins, responsible for Alzheimer’s disease, evolve in the brain.
Human brains analyzed
Their study, published in Science Advances, is all the more innovative in that it was carried out on human brains, whereas research on Alzheimer’s disease is usually done on mice. Thus, the scientists were able to observe that, unlike mice, the theory according to which clumps of toxic proteins form in one place in the brain and trigger a chain reaction in other areas does not hold true in humans.
“Two elements made this work possible”, details Georg Meisl, a chemist at the University of Cambridge and one of the authors of the article. “First the study of very detailed data coming from PET-scans (a type of medical imaging examination, nldr) and various data sets gathered, and the mathematical models that have been developed over the last ten years “, he continues.
100 PET scans screened
To follow the aggregation of toxic proteins, his team analyzed 400 brain samples taken after the death of people with Alzheimer’s, as well as 100 PET scans performed on people living with the disease.
“Hopefully, this study and others will help guide the development of future treatments that target tau, so they have a better chance of slowing disease and helping people with dementia,” concludes in a press release Sara Imarisio, of Alzheimer’s Research UK.
.
