by German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In individuals with a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease, the immune cells of the brain—the “microglia”—start exerting a protective effect up to two decades before the first symptoms appear. A team from Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München draws this conclusion...
by Brigham and Women’s Hospital Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Daytime napping is common among older adults. The longitudinal relationship between daytime napping and cognitive aging, however, is unknown. A new cohort study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital found a bidirectional link between the two: excessive daytime napping predicted an increased future risk of...
ELSEVIER Philadelphia, March 16, 2022 – Alzheimer’s disease (AD) eventually leads to severe cognitive decline, but most affected individuals also develop distressing neuropsychiatric symptoms. These earlier effects may be more subtle and are not well understood; it remains unclear whether they arise directly from AD pathology or secondarily as psychological reactions due to the cognitive deficits. Now, a...
Today’s open access review discusses the growing burden of cellular senescence with age in the context of brain tissue and neurodegenerative disease. Cells become senescent constantly throughout life, largely the result of ordinary somatic cells hitting the Hayflick limit on replication, but also, and increasingly with age, due to a stressful, damaging, inflammatory environment. Senescent cells serve a useful purpose when present...
by Kimberly McGhee, Medical University of South Carolina Graphical abstract. Credit: Molecular Therapy (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2022.01.023 Alzheimer’s disease is an enormous problem that, with an aging population, will only become bigger. More than 6 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and 1 in 3 seniors will die of it, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. By 2050,...
by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A Johns Hopkins Medicine study of about 50 people with Alzheimer’s disease has added to evidence that damage to the inner ear system that controls balance is a major factor in patients’ well-documented higher risk of falling. Overall, the researchers say, their study found...
by Columbia University A key fragment of the protein TMEM106B, several atomic models of which are shown here, can stack into single or twinned types of fibrils. Credit: Andrew Chang and Anthony Fitzpatrick / Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute / Cell Take a cell-deep tour of a brain afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, and you will find minuscule...
CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS Epidemiological studies have shown that women are twice as likely as men to develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but the cause of this phenomenon has been unclear. Now, however, a study led by Prof. Keqiang Ye from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences provides...
by University of Geneva Left: normal astrocyte able to destroy toxic lipids produced by neurons. Right: an astrocyte that stores lipids in droplets (pink) and starts secreting toxic lipids in the surrounding tissue. Credit: UNIGE / A.-C. Gavin Neurons in the brain coexist with and rely on many other cell types to function properly. Astrocytes, which take their name from their star shape, ensure the survival...
For decades, the thinking about Alzheimer’s disease has been dominated by the so-called amyloid hypothesis which proposes that an abnormal accumulation of amyloid-beta plaques in various parts of the brain is the main driver of a cascade of events, leading to the loss of synapses and the death of neurons causing deficits in cognition and...
