Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday November 03 2017, @02:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the progress-against-a-nasty-disease dept.

https://news.ubc.ca/2017/10/31/alzheimers-disease-might-be-a-whole-body-problem/

Alzheimer's disease, the leading cause of dementia, has long been assumed to originate in the brain but new research indicates that it could be triggered by breakdowns elsewhere in the body.

The findings, published today in Molecular Psychiatry [DOI: 10.1038/mp.2017.204] [DX], offer hope that future drug therapies might be able to stop or slow the disease without acting directly on the brain, which is a complex, sensitive and often hard-to-reach target. Instead, such drugs could target the kidney or liver, ridding the blood of a toxic protein [amyloid-β protein] before it ever reaches the brain.

"Alzheimer's disease is clearly a disease of the brain, but our research shows that we need to pay attention to the whole body to understand where it comes from, and how to stop it," said Dr. Weihong Song, UBC psychiatry professor.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:03PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:03PM (#591694)

    How many hundreds of billions (trillions) of $ will be spent on targeting a-beta before this is over? No data or reasoning seems to put a dent in the enthusiasm for this idea.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=2, Disagree=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:49PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:49PM (#591706)

    To whoever downvoted, can you find one disease state where someone has looked for a link to amyloids and not found it? Amyloids are like the generic cold symptoms of diseases because it requires constant vigilance to prevent their formation (they are the lowest energy state for any peptide).

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday November 03 2017, @05:22PM (3 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday November 03 2017, @05:22PM (#591753) Journal

      To whoever downvoted,

      Which would be: No one. The only moderation that post got up to now is a single Disagree, which doesn't reduce the post's score, therefore is not a downvote.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:52PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:52PM (#591772)

        It sure feels like a downvote.

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @07:14PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @07:14PM (#591822)
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:59PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:59PM (#591881)

          Get off Reddit, fake internet points shouldn't be affecting your mental health. Don't you know what kind of invertebrates inhabit the net??