Scientific progress: a virus injected into the brain manages to prevent Alzheimer’s disease

A team of researchers, led by the Spanish Magdalena Sastre, has developed a method to prevent Alzheimer’s disease in mice by injecting a virus that allows you to transmit a specific gene in the brain, the study was published today in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences magazine magazine. This discovery made by scientists of the Imperial College of London, even if it is in its initial phases of the research, could open the door to new possible treatments for the disease. Science has discovered that this gene, called PGC1-ALFA, can prevent the formation of the amyloid-hail protein Natruretic in laboratory cells. This protein is the main component of amyloid plaques, a viscous mass of protein that has been found in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease, and is thought to trigger brain cell death.

This discovery could encourage new approaches to prevent or stop the disease in its initial stages.

“ even if these results are still in the initial phase suggest, however, that this therapy of genes can have a therapeutic potential use for those patients.” There are still many obstacles to overcome and currently the only way to transmit this gene is through the direct injection in the brain ”. Sastre, a scientist of the Imperial College of London, main author of the study.” The researchers injected the virus with the gene in two areas of the brain of the mice where the Alzheimer’s disease, the hippocampus (which controls short -term memory) and the cortex (which controls long -term memory could be developed ), and that they are the first where the amyloid plaques begin. The animals were treated in the first episodes of the disease, when they still do not have these formations and subsequently four months later it was found that the mice that had received the gene had very few of these formations compared to the group of mice that had not been subjected to treatment.

Furthermore, a loss of brain cells had not been recorded in the#8217; hippocampus.

Dr. Sastre added that other studies are underway and that exercise and a component, resveratrol, can help the levels of this PGC-1 gene. “ we are still at the beginning of the use of this therapy as a clinical treatment.” However, in urgent cases of the disease c ’ it is needed for new options for patients and this discovery offers hope for future therapies. The research was financed Department of British Health and the Council of European Research. Alzheimer’s disease is a fatal brain disease that causes a slow decline in memory skills, thinking and reasoning.

Giovanni D’Agata, president of the “Rights Window”, an association that also deals with the protection of those suffering from these neurodegenerative diseases, points out that around 47 million people worldwide are affected by senile dementia, and Alzheimer’s is the most common type. The non -existence of a cure, since current medicines can only temporarily alleviate the symptoms, implies the fact that not only those who are affected by the disease suffers the consequences that lead it to a progressive decay up to death, but also their family members who they must assist them. It is therefore difficult, therefore, to estimate, for their enormity, the social costs that the disease leads to welfare systems, but it is obvious that the discovery of effective cure could on the one hand bring relief to millions of people in the world, but also significantly reducing public health expenditure globally.