Inhaled anesthetics commonly used in surgery are more likely to cause the aggregation of Alzheimer's disease-related plaques in the brain than intravenous anesthetics say University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers in a journal article published in Biochemistry.
This is the first report using state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic technique to explain the detailed molecular mechanism behind the aggregation of amyloid beta (Abeta) peptide due to various anesthetics.
Abeta plaques are found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. Many believe that the uncontrolled clumping of Abeta is the cause of Alzheimer's disease and that the similar aggregation of peptides and proteins play a role in the development of other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease.
"Many people know of or have heard of an elderly person who went into surgery where they received anesthesia and when they woke up they had noticeable memory loss or cognitive dysfunction," said Pravat K. Mandal, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and lead author of the study. Previous studies by the Pittsburgh researchers found that the inhaled anesthetics halothane and isoflurane and the intravenous anesthetic propofol encouraged the growth and clumping of Abeta in a test tube experiment.
"Our prior research had shown in molecular models that anesthetics may play a role by causing amyloid peptides to clump together?something that is thought to signal the advancement of Alzheimer's disease. In this study, we set out to see why this was happening and to determine if any one form of anesthesia might be a safer option than another," said Dr. Mandal.