amyloid

A medical treatment given to children in the UK may have led to some developing Alzheimer’s disease decades later, new research out Monday suggests. The study presents evidence that at least five people contracted the neurodegenerative disorder from having received human growth hormones contaminated with rogue amyloid beta protein. The authors point out that Alzheimer’s cannot be caught person-to-person through conventional means, however, and this specific infection risk no longer exists today.Alex Winter on the Most…

New research explores how amyloids, capable of forming under early Earth conditions and binding with RNA and DNA, may have played a key role in life’s emergence by increasing molecular stability and encouraging cooperation over competition.The question of how living organisms emerged from non-living matter remains one of the most profound mysteries in science. Despite numerous theories, a conclusive explanation remains elusive. This is hardly unexpected, considering these events occurred three to four billion years ago,…

The success of Eisai Co. ’s new Alzheimer’s drug has helped quiet a decadeslong dispute over a leading theory of what causes the disease and how to treat it, with proponents declaring victory and some former skeptics switching sides. Since the early 1990s, many scientists have thought that removing clumps of a sticky protein called amyloid from the brains of Alzheimer’s patients could help slow the disease, if not stall or reverse it. The theory was an outgrowth of the “amyloid hypothesis,”…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)An experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s disease may pose a life-threatening risk of brain bleeding for certain patients, an investigative report out this week suggests. The paper, published Monday in the journal Science, details the case of a 65-year-old woman who died from massive hemorrhaging that could have arisen from taking a common blood thinner while on the experimental drug. The incident is believed to be the second similar death linked to the treatment, which will be reviewed…

Watching the Alzheimer’s research world from the outside over the past two years has felt like a car ride over an unpaved mountain road without a seatbelt. In 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration took the unusual step of overruling its advisory committee to approve the sale of Aduhelm, the first new Alzheimer’s drug in nearly two decades. The drug was designed to work by clearing accumulations of amyloid beta, a protein that has long been linked to the disease, from patient’s brains. In clinical trials, the drug did…

The green tea molecule, known as EGCG, is known to break up tau fibers, which are lengthy, multilayered filaments that create tangles that target neurons and cause them to die.A molecule found in green tea helped UCLA biochemists in the discovery of multiple molecules capable of destroying tau fibers.University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers used a molecule present in green tea to uncover more molecules that may break up protein tangles in the brain, which are known to cause <span…

The prevailing theory is that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain. However, new research finds that it is actually caused by a decline in levels of a specific protein.New research on patients with mutations published in the Journal of <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Alzheimer’s</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Alzheimer's disease is a disease that attacks the brain,…

Alzheimer's disease has long thwarted our best efforts to pinpoint its underlying causes. Now, a new study in mice suggests that 'poisonous flowers' bulging with cellular debris could be the root source of one hallmark of the wretched disease and a beautifully sinister sign of a failing waste disposal system inside damaged brain cells.  The study, led by neuroscientist Ju-Hyun Lee of New York University (NYU) Langone, challenges the long-standing idea that the build-up of a protein called amyloid-beta between neurons is…