- About 32 million people globally have Alzheimer’s disease.
- While scientists are still unclear as to the true cause of Alzheimer’s disease, they do know a loss of neurons in the brain plays an important role.
- A new study from researchers at Northwestern University has found a possible new cause of neuron death in Alzheimer’s through toxic RNA strands.
Alzheimer’s disease is the
While scientists are still unclear as to the true cause of Alzheimer’s disease, they do know a
Now, in a new study published in the journal
Medical News Today spoke with Dr. Marcus Peter, Ph.D., the Tom D. Spies Professor of Cancer Metabolism at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and senior author of this study. Dr. Peter told MNT that he and his team decided to focus on what causes brain cell loss in Alzheimer’s disease after discovering a novel and powerful
“We hypothesized that this mechanism, while powerful in killing cancer cells, may also under certain circumstances kill normal cells,” Dr. Peter explained. “We were looking for diseases that are characterized by cell loss — such as
“We found it in Alzheimer’s disease as it has been described multiple times that
Alzheimer’s disease patients have less cancer . So we tested whether our original anti-cancer kill code was contributing to Alzheimer’s disease pathology and found ample evidence for that.”– Dr. Peter
For this study, Dr. Peter and his team analyzed the brains of several sources, including mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease,…
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