(ORDO NEWS) — The new hypothesis is that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by damage to the blood-brain barrier, which allows lipids to enter the brain and trigger a cascade of events that eventually leads to neurodegeneration.
The causes of Alzheimer’s disease are still largely unclear. But it seems that scientists now know one of the mechanisms that triggers it.
Tens of millions of people are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease and this number is expected to double by 2060.
Despite decades of work and billions of dollars, researchers have not been able to unravel the mystery of this common neurodegenerative disease.
Meanwhile, the mechanism by which this disease appears may be the key to creating a cure for it.
What causes Alzheimer’s disease
Since the 1990s, the dominant hypothesis explaining the cause of Alzheimer’s disease has been linked to a pair of proteins known as amyloid and tau.
The abnormal accumulation of these proteins in the brain is one of the most obvious pathological features of Alzheimer’s disease, and most research has focused on finding a pharmaceutical way to stop or reverse the toxic accumulation of these proteins in the human brain.
Unfortunately, virtually all human clinical trials of a new anti-amyloid or anti-tau drug have failed, and some researchers have begun to question the entire foundation of modern Alzheimer’s science.
Recently, many alternative hypotheses have been put forward to explain the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, from the fact that it is caused by viral infections to the suggestion that it is actually an autoimmune disease.
Jonathan Rudge, a researcher at the University of Reading, has tried to create a new hypothesis to explain the cause of this hitherto unexplained disease.
His hypothesis was called the Lipid Invasion Model. It all starts with a violation of the blood-brain barrier, which prevents harmful molecules and cells from penetrating from the blood to the brain.
The idea is that a collapsing blood-brain barrier allows excess lipid levels to enter the brain, and this sets off a cascade of damaging events leading to what we call Alzheimer’s disease.
Raj argues that this mechanism explains some of the anomalies in Alzheimer’s science, such as the small number of patients who have the basic cognitive signs of Alzheimer’s disease without the presence of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain.
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