Some people who have Alzheimer\u2019s disease pathology never get dementia because they have a protective biological mechanism working in their favor, a new study suggests.<\/p>\n
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Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch studied postmortem brains and found that people who presented with brain pathology consistent with fully symptomatic Alzheimer\u2019s disease\u2014but not dementia\u2014also had preserved autophagy, a physiological system that allows cells to recycle or eliminate junk and clutter.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is significant, because it means that our brain is not necessarily a victim in the battle against Alzheimer\u2019s,\u201d said Dr. Giulio Taglialatela, the corresponding author, a neurology professor and the director of Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases.<\/p>\n
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Alzheimer’s & Dementia: a recent study found non-demented Alzheimer\u2019s brains had preserved autophagy and reduced levels of Tau, a toxic protein that accumulates.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe describe that these individuals have higher efficiency in removing the toxic Tau proteins,\u201d said Dr. Anna Fracassi, one of the authors and a neurology postdoctoral fellow at UTMB.<\/p>\n
Alzheimer\u2019s disease causes dementia, and scientists think that an accumulation of certain toxic products is why. Autophagy can clean out these toxic products at the cell level.<\/p>\n
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\u201cImagine a garbage service,\u201d Taglialatela said. \u201cCells and neurons have to get rid of anything which cannot be recycled or reused within the cell.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Autophagy is a normal process in human cells, but in people with dementia because of Alzheimer\u2019s disease, autophagy doesn\u2019t do that job as well as it once did.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIn dementia, there\u2019s a dramatic reduction of this ability of autophagy,\u201d Taglialatela said. \u201cThat decline that is normally observed in dementia in Alzheimer’s patients does not occur in these people who are resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The cause of the vast majority of sporadic Alzheimer\u2019s cases is not known yet, but it is not genetic and any correlation with diet or environment is moderate at best.<\/p>\n
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Even so, this new research indicates a way more people might prevent dementia. Researchers can now look at ways to induce autophagy for therapeutic treatment.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis illustrates that there is a natural way for our brain to react appropriately to the pathology associated with dementia in Alzheimer’s disease,\u201d Taglialatela said.\u00a0 \u201cThere is a natural way for our brain to perfectly adapt to the challenge and win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some people who have Alzheimer\u2019s disease pathology never get dementia because they have a protective biological mechanism working in their favor, a new study suggests. Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch studied postmortem brains and found that people who presented with brain pathology consistent with fully symptomatic Alzheimer\u2019s disease\u2014but not dementia\u2014also had preserved autophagy, a physiological system that allows cells to recycle or eliminate junk and clutter. \u201cThis is significant, because…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[106],"class_list":["post-6981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hosphead","tag-hosphead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6983,"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6981\/revisions\/6983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjhnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}