Calcium’s possible role in Alzheimer’s
A new study in mice finds that plaques associated with Alzheimer’s wreak havoc on calcium’s role in cell signaling.
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Careful journalists write that Alzheimer’s disease is associated with the characteristic plaques in patients’ brains, never that it’s caused by those plaques.
Scientists have been uncertain whether these plaques actually cause the memory impairment typical of the disease, but new research on mice suggests that calcium could link the plaques to nerve-cell dysfunction.
“It’s the first evidence that calcium can be affected by [plaques] in areas that are important for synapse formation and learning and memory,” comments Alzheimer’s disease expert Kim Green of the University of California, Irvine, who cowrote a review article published with the new research in the July 31 Neuron.