{"id":7598,"date":"2016-05-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-alzheimers-infections-and-alzheimers-disease\/"},"modified":"2016-05-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T00:00:00","slug":"condition-alzheimers-infections-and-alzheimers-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-alzheimers-infections-and-alzheimers-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Infections Cause Alzheimer's?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Researchers have long believed that the devastating protein plaques that collect in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease have no useful function, and their presence does nothing but obliterate once vital memories and minds.<\/p>\n A study published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine<\/i> suggests that the plaques—made of a protein called amyloid beta—may actually have a role after all, possibly in fighting off infection<\/a>, and that Alzheimer's may be an unwelcome result of this legitimate purpose.<\/p>\n This could change the thinking about a disease that has not seen a new drug approval since 2003 and stubbornly eluded scientists' efforts not only to treat it, but even to understand it.<\/p>\n Any practical applications of the new research, however, are still a long way off.<\/p>\n "It's intriguing, it's exciting, and it opens new opportunities for intervening in the disease, but at the same time it's very preliminary and speculative," says Ronald Petersen, MD, PhD, director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minnesota. "I wouldn't go too far in saying that this is the answer or breakthrough."<\/p>\n But it is different.<\/p>\n "The [theory] that has guided therapeutic strategies for more than 30 years is that amyloid beta is a freak, that what it does is abnormal and has no function," says study corresponding author Robert Moir, PhD, of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease in Boston.<\/p>\n