For anyone who has friends or family suffering from Alzheimer's, you are painfully aware of the difficulties with this illness. It's still early days but scientists are learning so much more about this every day. The Independent:
A scientific breakthrough in the understanding of how Alzheimer's disease may spread across the brain of elderly patients might lead to novel ways of treating senile dementia, scientists have announced.
A study has discovered that a key brain protein linked with Alzheimer's disease has infectious properties that allow defects in the protein to be transmitted through the brain and so leads to debilitating neuro-degeneration.
It is the first time that scientists have detected infectious properties in the so-called tau protein which causes aggregates of particles known as "neurofibrillary tangles" to build up inside the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients. The tangles lead to the disease's symptoms.
But the researchers emphasised that the discovery does not mean that the disease itself is infectious, only that the tau protein seen in Alzheimer's disease is able to convert otherwise healthy brain proteins into the defective form associated with the disease.
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