Alzheimers disease associated with the formation of protein plaques in the brain.

It is a
huge mystery that, some people can have these plaques on their brain and not show a single
symptom as if they did not get the disease even though their brain shows that they do. Research
suggests that some peoples brain are able to reorganize during the early stages of Alzheimers,
delaying the appearance of initial symptoms. (Slezak, Michael. Brains Can Power Up To Get
Around Alzheimers Plaques). These plaques are found in the brain of Alzheimer patients leaving
a debate to whether this is a cause of Alzheimers disease or not. There is appearance of plaques
in older people who do not show symptoms for Alzheimers and this is a reason why it is up for
such a big debate.
William Jagust from the University of California in Berkeley as well as some colleagues,
ran a study where they compared brain functions in three groups of people; young people, older
people with the plaque and also older people without the plaques. For the study, he asked each of
them to memorize a photographed scene while inside the machine. Jagust found that older people
with the plaque increased blood flow - in the regions of the brain that are usually activated
during memory formation, compared with the older people who did not have plaques. (Slezak,
Michael. Brains Can Power Up to Get Around Alzheimers Plaques). The team concluded as to
whether this extra brain activity is helping to compensate for the plaques. They were not done
with this experiment just yet though. Fifteen minutes after the memorizing of the scene and
scanning, they presented everyone with six written details of the scene and asked whether they
were true or false. The older people with the plaque, were more accurate and showed more brain
activity in the fMRI from the image. Jagust says, That suggested to us that they were able to
ramp up activity to retain more information. We interpret this as a compensation or plasticity.
The older people who didnt have amyloid didnt do it. (Slezak, Michael. Brains Can Power Up
to Get Around Alzheimers Plaques). The amount of plaques a person had did have relation to
this boosting of brain activity. The more one had, the more they seemed to ramp up their brain
activity. These results help explain why some people show symptoms of the disease while others
do not when they both have the plaques. A neurologist from the University of Zurich in
Switzerland named Roger Nitsch says, The fact that brain amyloid is detectable in cognitively
normal elderly subjects has been used historically as an argument to support the idea that
amyloid may not be as toxic as suggested by experimental studies. (Slezak, Michael. Brains
Can Power Up to Get Around Alzheimers Plaques).
In 2014, there was an article posted about a new discovery on the gender biases
Alzheimers has. To begin with, the belief is that if you have Alzheimers, you carry an APOE
gene called APOE4. In 1993, scientists thought that if you had one copy, it raises the risk of
Alzheimers, and if you had two, it raises the risk even more. However, there was a study done
by Michael Greicius and colleges at Stanford University to see if gender played any role in this.
What they had found was that women with one of the APOE4 gene were 1.8 times more likely to
be diagnosed with Alzheimers disease than those women who do not have the gene. Whereas for
men, if they had one copy of the gene, it did not raise any risk of having or getting the disease.
That being said, Alzheimers does in fact have a gender bias, and it is thought that women are
more susceptible to the disease.
Alzheimers is a disease more known to older people. They start to worry about getting it
when they start getting memory loss. Another article I found from 2014 tells us about how
simple blood tests can tell these people if they are going to get the disease or not. This new blood
test is said to be correct 90 percent of the time. Any type of drugs in the past have failed, in
theory, because they give them to people after they know they have the disease and it is too late

to stop it. With this new blood test, they seek out those who are worried about getting it, due to
little memory loss or other possible symptoms, so they can stop it before it is actually diagnosed.
A team member from the study team, Ian Pike, says, Having a blood test is a really big step
forward. The most important thing we can do is get the correct patients into clinical trials so we
can tell, for example, whether it is a drug that is slowing the progression of the disease or the fact
that we just happen to have a group of patients who have a slow progressing form of the
disease.(Thomson, Helen. Simple Blood Test Gives Early Warning of Alzheimers).
There are many unknown causes to why people get Alzheimers. The biggest cause
everyone has decided on was that it is genetic. A new study has shown that
another cause could be the iron levels in our brain. It has been said that iron is good for our
bodies. While this is in fact true, this new study has shown that too much iron can also be bad
for our bodies by bringing on Alzheimers disease. They also found that the gene APOE4 is
strongly linked with higher iron. That being said, if you carry this gene you are at higher risk. If
all of this is true, it means that we can measure peoples brain iron levels that could help us
identify those who are at risk. Also, since we have drugs that help lower peoples iron, this could
be the start of a cure to stop Alzheimers before it is diagnosed. There is an iron-binding drug
called deferiprone which gets into the brain and reduces levels of the metal there without
disturbing blood levels too much. It is used to treat cases of iron poisoning and has also been
found to slow the progression of Parkinsons disease, another condition in which high iron levels
have been implicated. (Wilson, Clare. Iron Levels in Brain Predict When People Will Get
Alzheimers.)
Studies have stopped their research and experiments to the possible association between
Alzheimers disease and the epigenetic alteration of gene function. The researchers stress,
however, that more research is needed to find out if the changes play a causal role in the disease
or occur as a result of it. (Coghlan, Andy. Hints of Epigenetic Role in Alzheimers Disease). We
have evidence on possible ways one can elevate the risk of developing Alzheimers. Some of
these examples are; poor diet, lack of exercise, and inflammatory conditions such as diabetes,
obesity and clogging of blood vessels with fatty deposits. They were able to strengthen this idea
of the changing of lifestyle that raise the risk of Alzheimers may be taken affect through
epigenetic changes, by doing an experiment on hundreds of people, many that had died of
Alzheimers. Jonathan Mill at the University of Exeter say, The results are compelling and
consistent across the four cohorts of patients taken across the two studies. It is illuminated new
genetic pathways affecting the disease and, given the lack of success tackling Alzheimers so far,
new leads are going to be vital. (Coghlan, Andy. Hints of Epigenetic Role in Alzheimers
Disease). The researchers cannot tell whether the gene changes help cause the disease, or occur
as a result of it. This is because they are working with the brains of those who have died, making
this not easy at all.
A recent study with 33 people who have Alzheimers has shown that a drug that is already
being used by many to treat rheumatoid arthritis, may be able to stop or slow down the
progression of Alzheimers. A 2012 report by the World Health Organization showed that, by
2030, 70 million people worldwide will have dementia . . . Between 2002 and 2012, 413 trials of
drugs for Alzheimers disease were conducted, but 99.6 percent of them failed. (Coghlan, Andy.
Arthritis Drug Shows Potential to Stall Alzheimers). With that being said, there is the most
recent study that shows preliminary results that suggest that a drug being used to treat arthritis
could possibly stop the progression of Alzheimers. Clive Holmes from the University of
Southampton, UK says, We saw exactly what we hoped we would, and no one has shown these

effects before. Theres always the proviso that it might be done in larger numbers of patients in a
bigger study, over a year, not six months.