A study using mice has uncovered a possible cause of Alzheimer’s disease, and suggests that a drug currently being investigated in human clinical trials to treat cancer could prevent the illness.
The research has been heralded as offering hope of finding new treatments for dementia.
The findings, by Duke University in America and published in the Journal of Neuroscience, are surprising, according to one of the authors, as they contradict current thinking on the disease.
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The research suggests that in mice with Alzheimer’s disease certain immune cells that normally protect the brain begin abnormally to consume an important nutrient called arginine.
By blocking this process using the drug difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), memory loss and a buildup of sticky proteins known as brain plaques were prevented
but the study found a heightened expression of genes associated with the suppression of the immune system.
“All of this suggests to us that if you can block this local process of amino acid deprivation, then you can protect the mouse, at least, from Alzheimer’s disease,” Kan said.
The research has been welcomed by the Alzheimer’s Society. Its head of research, Dr James Pickett, said: “This study in animals joins some of the dots in our incomplete understanding of the processes that cause Alzheimer’s disease, in particular around the role played by the immune system.
“Importantly, these new findings reflect earlier observations that arginine is reduced in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. The next step would be to show that targeting arginine metabolism in the brain can reduce the death of brain cells, as this was not shown in the current study.”