Alzheimer’s Didn’t Cause Memory Loss For These Superaging 90-Year Olds, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Study
The defective proteins that are widely thought to kill brain neurons and cause, or at least indicate, Alzheimer's disease do not always have that calamitous result, scientists reported on Monday, raising more doubts about conventional approaches to diagnosing and finding treatments for Alzheimer's.
The researchers analyzed the brains of eight people who died in their 90s and who had excellent recall until then. Three of the eight brains had the defining amyloid plaques and tau tangles of Alzheimer's, yet somehow were "immune to [their] effects," said neurologist Changiz Geula, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the study and presented the results at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego.
The researchers analyzed the brains of eight people who died in their 90s and who had excellent recall until then. Three of the eight brains had the defining amyloid plaques and tau tangles of Alzheimer's, yet somehow were "immune to [their] effects," said neurologist Changiz Geula, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the study and presented the results at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego.