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By Kirsten Houmann, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) A surprising finding in an Alzheimers disease study on mice may lead to a new treatment for patients.
In Alzheimers patients, buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain is thought to destroy nerve cells and cause damaging inflammation. Earlier studies showed molecules called transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-) responded by increasing their activity.
A recent study conducted at the Yale University School of Medicine tested TGF-?s role in the brain by stopping its activity throughout the body. They expected the swelling to grow worse, but instead immune cells entered the brain and ate amyloid plaques like a PAC-MAN video game. These immune cells are also called macrophages.
So here is, by accident, a discovery of how macrophages can get into the brain and do the same thing they do in the rest of the body -- eat the amyloids, said Rudolph Tanzi, Ph.D., professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who was not associated with the study. If this all turns it to be applicable to humans -- if we had a drug that was targeted against TGF- -- you could induce macrophages to enter the brain and clean up the amyloid. So that means it could be used preventatively, and as a treatment.
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Source: Study funded by the Alzheimers Association and the National Institutes of Health
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
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