David Nield reports at sciencealert.com,
Researchers have identified a new link between Alzheimer's and a protein called tau that could help treat the disease in the future.Read more here.
..."Once tau accumulates, the brain degenerates," says senior researcher David Holtzman, from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
"What we found was that when ApoE is there, it amplifies the toxic function of tau, which means that if we can reduce ApoE levels we may be able to stop the disease process."
ApoE (or Apolipoprotein E) helps to move cholesterol around the body. In rare cases, people can be born without the ApoE gene, leading to very high cholesterol levels and associated health problems.
To take a closer look at how ApoE could be linked to Alzheimer's and other brain diseases, researchers studied mice given variants of the ApoE gene: ApoE2, ApoE3, and ApoE4. Some mice lacked the gene altogether.
In the absence of the ApoE proteins produced by these genes, especially the ApoE4 variant, tangled clumps of the tau protein were much less harmful to brain cells, so reducing the influence of ApoE could be a promising avenue for future research into treatments.
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