Researchers at Australia’s Queensland Brain Institute have come up with a novel application of an old tool that might seriously impact the lives of people suffering from one of the worst diseases imaginable;
-Alzheimer’s.
“Breakthrough” might even be the word used to describe it.
Though he hasn’t yet discussed the inspiration for what is basically a Physical trick instead of a pharmaceutical one,
Something lead Dr. Jurgen Gotz & his team to think that of all things, an old ultrasound box could be used on something as fragile as the brain,
Maybe even as a miraculous cure.
And the way this fix works is not exactly what you might think.
According to the description, the ultrasound does not “blast-away” things the way that traditional sports-medicine ultrasounds, on say a muscle, seem to modify tissue.
According to QBI, what Dr. Goetz’s technique does is to:
1) Open the blood-brain-barrier,
2) Create small bubbles, and then
3) Somehow agitate special cells called Micro-Glials into action.
They then work to clear out the Beta-Amyloid plaques that are the chief-irritant in an Alzheimerized-brain.
In-fact, this technique very probably activates the brain’s artery-surrounding hydraulic “Glymphatic System”, which we talked about here earlier.
Lucky for the subjects, the important Blood-Brain-Barrier is only open for a few hours, so it’s possible that the health risk is minimal.
Either way you look at it, the QBI team has scored an incredible win against a tough adversary, and with a pretty sweet 75% initial success rate.
Not only did the mice remember things they’d been taught, but the scans of their brains afterward showed definitively that huge amounts of beta-amyloid had been flushed out.
For some people, the human trials in 2017 cannot come fast enough!
The only questions that remain to be answered are:
1) Does it clear out the other source of Alzheimer’s? (Tau Proteins)
2) Will it be safe for humans, who are a little bit more complicated than mice & need to remember more than 3 things?
3) Are there ultrasound tools that can reach all the affected areas of the brain, or are things like an Intersecting-3-Beam setup necessary?
Check out the details at the Links:
Photo Credits: “Bald, Headphone”, by Sascha Kohlmann
Links:
• Source: QBI
• via: ABC-AU
• More Coverage: HT-Holy Super Mario! Brain’s Anti-Alzheimer Sewer-System Discovered! | HT-Compound Reverses Alzheimer’s In Minutes
Source Study: SciMag-Scanning ultrasound removes amyloid-β and restores memory in an Alzheimer’s disease mouse model
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