After years of nearly nothing, scientists have been seeing hopeful progress
Alzheimer’s disease is something that affects the majority of the population, whether it be directly or indirectly, and with a greater aging population, the horrors of dementia and Alzheimer’s have become more prominent.
Research towards Alzheimer’s disease is largely underfunded, and has also seen very slow progress over the past few decades. However, over the past few months of 2016, an influx of discoveries associated with Alzheimer’s cause have been made by various scientists in both Europe and North America.
In January, an Alzheimer’s breakthrough was made by researchers at the University of Southampton, who discovered a connection between Alzheimer’s disease and inflammation in the brain. According to a press release from the university, research scientists have established that “inflammation in the brain can in fact drive the development of the disease.”
Following this discovery, these scientists went on to explain in a study published in the journal Brain that reducing inflammation in the brain can possibly halt the disease’s development.
[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]…reducing inflammation in the brain…[/pullquote]
The following month, it was reported that a team of researchers from the University of California discovered a connection between Alzheimer’s disease and the immune system—two things that were not assumed to have any relation until recently.
These scientists discovered that immune cells that are situated outside of the brain have the ability to fight the plaque which can build up in the brain and eventually trigger the disease. T-cells and B-cells, which are different sets of immune cells located outside of the brain that fight against viral and bacterial infections, were studied by these Californian scientists to see if the cells had any effect on Alzheimer’s. By testing their theory on mice, the scientists found that the mice with intact immune systems built antibodies that helped to clear beta-amyloid (a protein that forms the plaque that drives the development of Alzheimer’s).
As for the mice that were immune-deficient, the scientists transplanted healthy bone marrow cells which restored the mice’s missing immune cells.
Finally, in the same month a group of Canadian scientists from Dalhousie University modified a molecule that is said to attach itself to the proteins in the brain that are assumed to be responsible for causing Alzheimer’s disease—this would streamline the diagnosis process, which is a diagnosis that is currently only made after death.
This Halifax discovery is still unproven and in its early stages of research. There is still a long way to go before it can be tested on human beings.