Phages break up plaques
By Brian Vastag
From Toronto, at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology
Phages, which are viruses that infect bacteria, cut through plaques in the brains of mice engineered to develop a disease similar to Alzheimer’s. That action helped the rodents recover.
“Phages dissolve plaque,” says Beka Solomon of Tel Aviv University in Israel. “We saw improvements in memory and smell tests” of the mice.
Solomon worked with a phage that infects Escherichia coli bacteria. It’s long and thin and is naturally attracted to the flat proteins that form plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Scientists generally agree that these plaques cause the disease.