A brand new drug has been developed for Alzheimer's disease
Last reviewed: 20.11.2021
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Alzheimer's disease, ranked sixth in the list of the most deadly ailments, is the most common cause of dementia. Only in the US, alzheimerism slowly but surely reduces to the grave at least 5.4 million people.
A study conducted at the University of Georgia, USA under the leadership of Erhard Beiberich, showed the following: when neurons start producing too much amyloid protein, which is a black label of Alzheimer's disease, astrocytes, which normally support and protect neurons, begin to send them "letters of death".
On the right is a healthy brain, on the left is the terminal stage of Alzheimer's disease
Amyloid proteins are excreted by all neurons, but with age, the rate of excretion increases, reaching a maximum already during the illness. Astrocytes, whose main task is to deliver oxygen and other nutrients, as well as to harvest some waste of neuronal activity, are activated and inflamed under the influence of an excess amount of amyloids.
What would you, the reader, do if the neuron produced something very toxic and would throw it under your door? Probably, they would prefer to somehow protect themselves from this disgrace. And there is. As the results of the study showed, this is what astrocytes in difficulty find themselves doing - protect themselves by expressing a deadly pair of PAR-4 proteins and sphingolipid ceramide (presumably serving as the shell for the transfer of PAR-4) and sending them as a "death letter" neuron. As a result, PAR-4 induces apoptosis in both cells-in the neuron and panic astrocyte, which explains the phenomenon of brain cell death in Alzheimer's.
Do not you think that thanks to this research the mosaic has finally taken shape? Amyloid does not lead to the death of brain cells: the brain kills itself; the amyloid only activates the protective reaction of the astrocyte, which throws out the deadly proteins towards the harmful neuron, which leads to the death of the neuron first, and then of the astrocyte itself. Such an absurd suicide ...
It seems that now we have the hope of developing a completely new medicine: the authors of the work believe that if it succeeded in destroying the deadly parcel sent by the astrocyte to the neuron, this would save mankind from senile senility.
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