A medical breakthrough could change the lives of millions of Alzheimer’s patients. American researchers have found a way to determine the course of the disease, according to an article published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Thanks to this advance, it may be possible, in the long term, to predict how quickly patients will lose their autonomy and their memory.
A protein to watch closely
The brains of Alzheimer’s patients show two major disorders. First, they have amyloid plaques that form a kind of glue between neurons. And then, inside the neurons this time, there is a protein, called the Tau protein, which accumulates and causes the death of these neurons.
This is where the researchers’ discovery comes in. Thanks to an advanced imaging technique in patients with early Alzheimer’s, they were able to show that to predict the progression of the disease, this Tau protein had to be closely monitored.
Medicines in tests
“The researchers realized that depending on where and how much Tau protein accumulated, it was possible to predict the course of the disease. The more it accumulates in large quantities and at certain particular places, more the speed of progression will be fast and thus the assumption of responsibility will have to be adapted as well as possible “, specifies professor Philippe Amouyel, president of the Alzheimer Foundation.
Once the information has been given to the patients, a treatment should then be set up, which does not yet exist, however. But new drugs of a new kind, targeting this Tau protein, are just being tested.
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