An investigation by the prestigious Mayo Clinic (USA.) Has concluded after examining more than 3,600 postmortem brains (of which 1,375 had Alzheimer confirmed) that the tau protein is the ultimate responsible for the loss and deterioration of cognitive memory in Alzheimer's disease. The study was published in the journal Brain.
According to the results of research, amyloid, also characteristic of Alzheimer's disease, protein is not the main culprit of this serious disease but the tau protein. "Over the past 25 years we have focused amyloid protein" acalara Melissa Murray, co-author of the study. However, in the new work simultaneously scientists analyzed the progress of both proteins, tau and amyloid several thousand postmortem brains of patients of different ages and at different stages of dementia, donated to science.
Examination of the data, because the brain as the disease progresses "offers a perspective of cognitive impact of a wide spectrum of severity of amyloid protein and tau" says Murray and allowed understand changes in both with over time. So the evolution of tau protein causes instability in hippocampal neurons, the memory center, which ultimately kills neurons.
"The evidence suggests that the protein toxic tau spreads from one cell to another through the cerebral cortex, the outer part of the brain involved in higher levels of thinking, planning, behavior and attention functions are altered in Alzheimer's. However, the study shows that the accumulation of amyloid has a strong relationship with decreased cognition, but by taking into account the severity of tau pathology, the relationship between amyloid and cognition disappears, indicating tau is the driver Alzheimer's "sentence Murray.
These results reveal that a therapy aimed at stopping this toxic tau protein responsible for the disease, should be a new medical approach to treating Alzheimer's
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