Alzheimer’s disease tagged posts

Vitamin A deficiency increased the production of plaques in the brains of mice.

Vitamin A deficiency could ‘program’ brain tissue. Biochemical reactions that cause Alzheimer’s disease could begin in the womb or just after birth if the fetus or newborn does not get enough vitamin A, according to new research from the University of British Columbia. These new findings, based on studies of genetically-engineered mice, also demonstrate that Vit A supplement given to newborns with low levels of vitamin A could be effective in slowing the degenerative brain disease.

“Our study clearly shows that marginal deficiency of vitamin A, even as early as in pregnancy, has a detrimental effect on brain development and has long-lasting effect that may facilitate Alzheimer’s disease in later life,” said Dr...

This is a grid cell from the entorhinal cortex (EC) of the mouse brain, firing repeatedly and uniformly in a grid-like pattern. When a mouse moves through its environment, grid cells are activated, with each cell representing a specific location. This creates a triangular coordinate system that allows for spatial navigation. Several grid cells create a triangular coordinate system that allows for spatial navigation. The accumulation of tau protein in the brain of a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease was shown to disrupt the function of grid cells, causing problems with navigation. The findings explains why Alzheimer’s patients tend to wander and get lost. Credit: Lab of Karen Duff, PhD, Columbia University Medical Center

Finding may explain why many Alzheimer’s disease patients wander...

Microglia cells (green spider shapes). Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southampton

Cells in the brain responsible for detecting and fixing minor damage renew themselves more quickly than previously thought, new research has shown. A study, led by the University of Southampton shows that the turnover of Microglia, is 10X faster, allowing the whole population of Microglia cells to be renewed several times during a lifetime.

“Microglia are constantly scanning the brain to find and fix issues — you could call them the housekeepers of the brain,” said Dr Diego Gomez-Nicola, of the University of Southampton, who supervised the study. “We previously thought that microglia would renew themselves so slowly that a whole lifetime would not suffice to renew the whole population...

High molecular weight tau bands (about 80kDa) can be appreciated, with greater immunoreactivity in patients with AD compared with healthy subjects. Credit: Dr. Ricardo B. Maccioni

Drs Maccioni and Farías have pioneered the technology that detects in human blood platelets the pathological oligomeric forms of brain tau protein in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders. More importantly, the ratio between this anomalous tau and the normal tau protein can discriminate AD patients from normal controls, and are associated with decreased cognitive impairment. These studies open a new avenue in the development of highly sensitive and efficient biomarkers for neurodegenerative disorders...