Scientists believe that helping the liver to clear amyloid-beta
protein from the blood could provide a new way of combating the
devastating effects of Alzheimer's, the most common form of
dementia. Alzheimer's, which causes progressive loss of memory
and mental faculties, affects almost 417,000 people in Britain,
including fantasy author Terry Pratchett who is campaigning for
more research into the disease. A key characteristic of the
disease is the accumulation of neuron-damaging amyloid-beta
(A-beta) in the brain. New research shows that levels of the
protein in the brain are affected by their levels in the
peripheral blood stream. Scientists in the US and Hong Kong
manipulated the livers of laboratory rats to increase blood
levels of amyloid-beta. One of the liver's primary jobs is to
remove toxic substances from the blood stream. The researchers
found that raising A-beta blood levels slowed down the speed at
which molecules of the protein were swept from the rats' brains.
The findings, reported in the Jou