Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center have for the first time identified a substance in the brain that is proven to cause memory loss. This discovery in mice gives drug developers a target for creating drugs to treat memory loss in people with dementia.
The research, led by Professor of Neurology Karen H. Ashe, M.D., Ph.D., is published in the March 16, 2006, issue of Nature.
"Finding the specific cause of memory loss and cognitive decline gives scientists a protein complex to target," Ashe said. "Now we can begin to work on how that protein leads to the disease and what we can do to prevent it from harming the brain."
Once the memory-robbing protein complex is better understood, drugs could be developed to stop Alzheimer's disease in its tracks. Currently about 4.5 million Americans live with Alzheimer's disease, a number that is projected to increase to 14 million in the next 20 years.
In the past, it was generally accepted that Alzheimer's disease was caused by plaques and tangles, unnatural accumulations of two naturally occurring proteins in the brain: amyloid-beta, which builds into plaques between nerve cells in the brain; and tau, which forms the tangles bundles inside nerve cells.
Ashe's lab proved last year that the tangles are not the cause of memory loss; this latest research shows the plaques aren't a major cause either.