In a new study, researchers found ‘Love hormone’ oxytocin could be used to treat cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s.
The research was conducted by a team of scientists from Japan.
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive disorder in which the nerve cells (neurons) in a person’s brain and the connections among them degenerate slowly, causing severe memory loss, intellectual deficiencies, and deterioration in motor skills and communication.
One of the main causes of Alzheimer’s is the accumulation of a protein called amyloid β (Aβ) in clusters around neurons in the brain, which hampers their activity and triggers their degeneration.
Studies in animal models have found that increasing the aggregation of Aβ in the hippocampus—the brain’s main learning and memory center—causes a decline in the signal transmission potential of the neurons therein.
This degeneration affects a specific trait of the neurons, called ‘synaptic plasticity,’ which is the ability of synapses (the site of signal exchange between neurons) to adapt to an increase or decrease in signaling activity over time.
Synaptic plasticity is crucial to the development of learning and cognitive functions in the hippocampus.
Thus, Aβ and its role in causing cognitive memory and deficits have been the focus of most research aimed at finding treatments for Alzheimer’s.
In the study, the team looked at oxytocin, a hormone conventionally known for its role in the female reproductive system and in inducing the feelings of love and well-being.
Oxytocin was recently found to be involved in regulating learning and memory performance, but so far, no previous study deals with the effect of oxytocin on Aβ-induced cognitive impairment.
They first perfused slices of the mouse hippocampus with Aβ to confirm that Aβ causes the signaling abilities of neurons in the slices to decline or—in other words—impairs their synaptic plasticity.
Upon additional perfusion with oxytocin, however, the signaling abilities increased, suggesting that oxytocin can reverse the impairment of synaptic plasticity that Aβ causes.
This is the first study in the world that has shown that oxytocin can reverse Aβ-induced impairments in the mouse hippocampus.
The team says this is only a first step and further research remains to be conducted in animal models and then humans before sufficient knowledge can be gathered to reposition oxytocin into a drug for Alzheimer’s.
One author of the study is Professor Akiyoshi Saitoh from the Tokyo University of Science.
The study is published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.
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