“Using a new animal model of Alzheimer’s, the researchers have found that depletion of a nutrient called arginine occurs in the damaged brain areas. Blocking the use of arginine reduced some of the disease hallmarks and improved memory performance, offering hope that these findings could lead to new treatments for dementia.
“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.”