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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

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

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 [nature.com] [DOI: 10.1038/mp.2017.204] [DX [doi.org]], 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 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.

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