Alzheimer’s Disease could be prevented or cured by a new drug which reboots the immune system to stop devastating memory loss, scientists believe.
A new study has shown for the first time that immune cells play a crucial role in the formation of sticky plaques which clump between brain cells, preventing them from functioning correctly.
Usually the body protects the brain from these plaques. But US scientists have found that in Alzheimer’s Disease the immune cells in the brain seem to go haywire, producing a molecule which actually reduces the immune response and consumes an important brain nutrient.
However a drug which blocks that molecule is already being tested in cancer patients, and researchers discovered that it stops the formation of plaques. It raises the prospect that statin-like drugs could be given to the middle-aged to ward off dementia.
Animal tests have already shown that the drug, difluoromethylornithine, (DFMO) stops mice developing Alzheimer’s and improved memory in creatures who already had the disorder…
Researchers found that most immune cells stay the same with the onset of Alzheimer’s, but one type, called microglia start producing a molecule called CD11c which suppress the immune system and eats up the important brain protecting nutrient called arginine.
The molecule was found in the highest quantities in regions of the brain involved in memory and where neurons had died.
“We see this study opening the doors to thinking about Alzheimer’s in a completely different way, to break the stalemate of ideas in Alzheimer’s,” said Dr Carol Colton, professor of neurology at Duke University…The research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.