The scientists then measured which genes had been active in each structure, and found one suspicious difference: 17 genes in the dentate gyrus became more active, or less, as the age of the brain increased. They extracted two structures in the hippocampus, a vital cog in the brain’s memory machinery: the dentate gyrus, a boomerang-shaped region whose function declines with age but is not affected by Alzheimer’s, and the entorhinal cortex, which is largely unaffected by aging but is where Alzheimer’s first takes hold, killing neurons. The researchers began with eight brains from the New York Brain Bank at Columbia University donated by people aged 33 to 88 who were free of brain disease when they died. “They provide clues to the underlying mechanism of age-related memory decline and will, hopefully, move us down the road toward targeted therapeutics.”Ībout 40 percent of Americans age 85 and older say they experience some memory loss, a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center found, as did 27 percent of those 75 to 84 and 20 percent of those ages 65 to 74. “This is a lovely set of studies,” said Molly Wagster of the National Institute on Aging, an expert on normal age-related memory decline who was not involved in the new study. By identifying the “where did I park the care?” molecule, the discovery could also kick-start the mostly moribund efforts to develop drugs to slow or roll back the memory lapses that accompany normal aging. In an unusual ray of hope for a field that has had almost nothing to offer older adults whose memory is failing, the study’s authors conclude that drugs, foods or even behaviors might be identified that affect those molecular mechanisms, helping to restore memory.Īny such interventions would represent a significant advance over the paltry offerings science has come up with so far to prevent memory decline, such as advice to keep cognitively active and healthy - which helps some people, but not all, and has only a flimsy scientific foundation.
Using human brains that had been donated to science as well as the brains of lab mice, the study for the first time pinpointed the molecular defects that cause cognitive aging.
Not only is age-related memory loss a syndrome in its own right and completely unrelated to that dread disease, but unlike Alzheimer’s it may be reversible or even preventable, researchers led by a Nobel laureate said in a study published on Wednesday. Patients with Alzheimer's and dementia are sit inside the Alzheimer foundation in Mexico City April 19, 2012.
0 kommentar(er)
