New model for Alzheimer's disease (ears, natural, protein, cause)

[Brian.Pearson]

A study from the Buck Institute for Age Research offers a revolutionary new model for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a devastating neurodegenerative disorder which afflicts 24 million people worldwide. In an effort to unravel the normal function of a protein implicated in AD, scientists in California and France have discovered a naturally occurring protein that provides a new therapeutic target for the disease. The finding upsets the current theory that AD is a disease of toxicity stemming from damage caused by sticky plaques that collect in the brain – this research points to the condition as a disorder involving an imbalance in signaling between neurons. The study appears online in the Nature publication Cell Death and Differentiation.