Now that they’ve been linked to some cases of Alzheimer’s, we need a prion-killer more than ever.
-Or at least something to break up the structures they form in those cases.
Because what the Yale team found out is that the Beta-Amyloid glop that normally hallmarks the disease is made worse when it runs into prions. That-is, the non-mutant, non-infectious, non-mad-cow-disease ones that occur naturally.
So, the idea now becomes: What if there is a way to at least break some type of that link up?
-Which may lead to an Entirely New way of treating Alzheimer’s, because the way they do it right now tries to break up the amyloid gunk.
Either way, if they try this new angle they’ll also have to find something that doesn’t break things up strangely, kill you, make you brain-dead, or mutate the “good” prions into the mutant ones from Mad Cow Disease;
-Even though they still have very little idea on what the hell prions actually do in the brain anyway.
Even further out, the same scientists are working on ways to prevent Beta-Amyloid’s parent, something called APP, from ever producing the B-A at all.
But there are several ways that APP can operate, and it looks like not all are bad. So: more complications, and a disease that’s looking like it happens more than one way.
I don’t know if that would-be prion-blockage-buster is in-fact a drug we already have, called Enbrel.
-As in the Alzheimer’s Reversal Post, but perhaps somewhere there is a biochemical Bruce Lee sitting on a shelf at Big Pharma, just waiting to be released.
Hit up the links for the details:
Links:
• Source: Yale
• via: SFGate
• More Coverage: Scientific American
• Source Study: Nature
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