A Promising New Alzheimer's Disease Finding

On December 10th 2010 the online medical information web site Medical News Today,  featured a report  concerning the work being done at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.  The article, entitled, Poor Brain Protein Elimination Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease Development,  disclosed that beta-amyloid, which is a hallmark of AD as it begins to build up into clumps and tangles, is normally purged and disposed out of healthy neuron cells.

The key point of what they focused upon in this study is this:
Beta-amyloid is one of many cellular waste products that is produced by the neuron cells that, in a healthy brain, is normally disposed of and flushed out of the brain through the spinal fluid.

In other words, the cells in our brain are naturally equipped with a mechanism for clearing out the sticky protein junk that leads to AD.

The breakdown of this cellular “trash removal process” is what leads to the toxic buildup of beta-amyloid protein followed by progressive brain cell die-off.  In other words a proverbial “garbage handlers strike” within the brain cell community arises.

The clearance of Beta-amyloid out of the cells, not its accumulation is the heart of the AD problem.

Now besides refining medications already on the market which are aimed at reducing the buildup of beta-amyloid protein, medical science can now begin to focus on developing medications that will prevent the cells from shutting down their waste processing function in the first place.

As I have written about before, we may be closer to blending two or more medications into a kind of cocktail for AD that has proved to be the successful technique at bringing AIDs under control throughout the world.

The preferred future “Alzheimer’s Cocktail” might very well be composed as follows:

First, a medication that will reawaken or enhance the cellular waste disposal function.

A second medication that goes to work at “protein plaque and tangle busting”.

Finally, a third medication or therapy component that stimulates the production of brand new neuron cells (neurogenesis) through stem cell intervention.

This is promising and exciting medical research.  We applaud those who are researching  AD origin and causation from the angle of sustaining the process of healthy cells purging out unwanted proteins and cellular waste.  This could be the key in shutting down the Alzheimer’s process before it even has a chance to begin.

Kind of like preventing the beavers from even showing up at all to build their pesky dams and block up healthy stream flows.


Jeff Dodson
December 13th 2010