July 14, 2010 Alzheimer's disease has long been studied
primarily as a disease of neurons. But researchers have now
shown how the disease may be damaging the brain by choking off
blood flow. In experiments published June 10 in Neuron,
scientists at Rockefeller University reveal that amyloid-β,
which builds up around brain cells in Alzheimer's patients,
interacts with a common blood clotting agent to increase
clotting in the arteries that feed the brain. Such activity
could cut off blood flow to neurons, suffocating them over time.
A drug that interferes with that process could reduce the memory
loss and dementia that are the most wrenching consequences of
the disease, the findings suggest. "There's at least this one
very promising therapeutic angle," says Sidney Strickland, head
of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Genetics at Rockefeller.
And what's nice is that a drug that disrupted this particular
interaction would not affect clotting elsewhere like regular
anticoagulants, because the amyloid-β peptide is