Alzheimer's disease can be infected
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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15 years ago, 8 people died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (mad cow disease), studying these cases a group of British scientists suggested that Alzheimer's causes may be related to the ingestion of beta-amyloids that destroy brain cells.
Scientists have determined that the development of Alzheimer's provokes a cluster of beta-amyloid proteins in the brain cells. The formation of beta-amyloid from the sections of the APP protein, which is necessary for the recovery of brain cells and neural connections. Failures in the work of APP lead to the formation of plaques of beta-amyloid proteins and cell death.
A group of scientists from the UK, led by Sebastian Brandner, almost randomly revealed the possible causes of Alzheimer's disease, the goal of scientists was to establish the true causes that caused the death of 8 people more than 10 years ago. The disease develops spontaneously in people, due to the appearance in the nerve cells of "irregular" proteins - prions (with a twisted structure) that disrupt the work of proteins, which leads to the death of brain cells. Infection with cow rabies occurs when consumed in the brain food of a sick animal or after treatment with contaminated drugs.
Brendner and his colleagues studied cases of infection with mad rabies, as it turned out, in Britain since the late 50's, short children were injected with growth hormones that were extracted from the pituitary gland of dead people. Almost 30 years later, this medical program was canceled, because according to some data, the treatment subsequently caused mad cow disease.
Also, the experts studied the nervous tissue of the brain of eight people who were injected with infected growth hormone, as a result, they found out that in the nerve tissues, in addition to prions, beta-amyloid proteins (in 6 of 8 people) were present. The maximum number of pathogenic proteins scientists found inside the pituitary.
Researchers remembered the results of past works, which were conducted with rodents and macaques. During the work, the experimental animals were injected with beta-amyloid proteins (in small doses) into different parts of the body and as a result found that regardless of the region of protein penetration, this could cause Alzheimer's disease (even if the proteins penetrated tissues away from the head brain).
At this stage, scientists can not conduct experiments with animals and confirm the fact that infection with Alzheimer's disease is possible. First of all, this is due to the prohibition of work with somatotropin because of ethical problems and the destruction of most of the stocks.
In the magazine where the article of the Brandner group was published, noted that this discovery is extremely important and has global consequences. Therefore, already a number of specialists expressed a desire to help the research team of Brandner and to study other cases of death from cow rabies of people who received growth hormones in their childhood. If the assumptions of Brander and his team are confirmed by other specialists, then new standards for the quality of drugs and the processing of tools to prevent the transmission of beta-amyloids will be required.
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