A Concise Overview of Amyloid- β in Alzheimer ' s Disease

The open access paper noted here is a fairly concise tour through current thinking on the role of amyloid-β in Alzheimer's disease. Amyloids are solid deposits that appear in aged tissues, a few specific proteins that can misfold or become altered in ways that cause them to clump together and precipitate from solution into fibrils and other structures. Either the amyloid itself or, as in the case of amyloid-β, the surrounding biochemistry prompted by its existence causes harm to cells. Since amyloids are created as a side-effect of the normal operation of cellular metabolism, and since they do in fact cause harm, they can be considered one of the root causes of aging. Why they are found in old tissues rather than young tissues is may be primarily a consequences of failing maintenance systems: problems in the drainage or filtration of cerebrospinal fluid; the progressive dysfunction of immune cells responsible for clearing out unwanted metabolic waste; the progressive failure of recycling mechanisms in long-lived cells. Given this, it is interesting to consider that the high-profile efforts to reduce levels of amyloid-β in Alzheimer's patients, largely through immunotherapies, were one of the earliest forms of significant work on rejuvenation - though not carried out with that intent. It continues to be the most aggressively funded of all such research, and still not with the intent of rejuvenation, though any sufficiently safe and comprehensive treatment could be re...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs