Alzheimer’s disease is a brain illness that makes people forget things and have trouble thinking.
It’s a leading cause of memory loss known as dementia, which affects millions of people around the world.
Changes in the brain that cause Alzheimer’s can start 10 to 20 years before a person even notices they’re forgetting things.
That’s why scientists at the Karolinska Institute are looking for early signs of Alzheimer’s. They’ve made an exciting discovery that we’ve shared in a scientific journal called Nature Reviews Neurology.
Astrocytes: The Brain’s Helpers
Astrocytes are a type of cell in the brain. They help keep the brain healthy and working well.
If something bad happens to the brain, astrocytes will respond quickly. This is why we’re interested in them.
When Alzheimer’s disease starts, astrocytes react, but we don’t fully understand what they do.
What we do know is that they seem to react even before other known signs of Alzheimer’s appear. So, we think astrocytes could be a clue to how Alzheimer’s starts.
The Cholinergic Hypothesis
About 40 years ago, scientists came up with an idea, or hypothesis, about how Alzheimer’s disease might work. They thought that something called cholinergic signaling might be involved.
This is like a communication system in the brain. This idea led to the development of drugs called cholinesterase inhibitors, which are currently the best treatments we have for Alzheimer’s.
Astrocytes and Alzheimer’s
In our paper, we looked at all the research done on astrocytes and cholinergic signaling over the last 20 years.
We’re particularly interested in a part of the astrocytes called α7nAChRs. We think these might play a big role in Alzheimer’s disease.
We discussed how α7nAChRs might be involved in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and highlighted some new ways that Alzheimer’s could develop.
Based on these ideas, we suggested that α7nAChRs in astrocytes could link together several theories about how Alzheimer’s works.
What’s more, if we can find a way to see these α7nAChRs in people’s brains using a method called PET imaging, it could change the way we diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s.
What’s Next?
We hope our paper will lead to new ways to spot Alzheimer’s early and new treatments to slow it down. This could also help with other diseases where astrocytes react in a similar way.
We’re now testing these ideas using a new way to see α7nAChRs in the brain. We developed a special tool called KIn-83 that we can use with PET imaging.
We’ve already used it to look at brains after people have died, and soon we hope to use it to look at living brains.
We’re really excited about what we might discover and how it could help people with Alzheimer’s in the future!
If you care about Alzheimer’s, please read studies about the root cause of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s, and 5 steps to protect against Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies that herb rosemary could help fight COVID-19 and Alzheimer’s, and results showing these antioxidants could help reduce the risk of dementia.
The study was published in Nature Reviews Neurology.
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