Amyloid plaques in postmortem human cortex correlated with the proportion of microglia that were activated, not with microglial numbers. Tau pathology and cognitive decline come later.
Reducing these esters with statins and cholesterol-hydroxylase-activating drugs lowers phospho-tau and Aβ in neurons. One such drug is approved to treat HIV AIDS.
Among cognitively normal people with amyloid plaques, women have more tau tangles in the entorhinal cortex than do men. Does this indicate susceptibility, or resilience?
In mouse models of Alzheimer’s, neutrophils stick to capillaries in the cerebral cortex, reducing blood flow. Keeping those cells moving or depleting them altogether improved memory.
A score based on the combined burden of a person’s Alzheimer’s risk variants correlated with plaques, tangles, cognitive decline, and even non-AD pathology. Are polygenic hazard scores ready for direct-to-consumer marketing?
IBM researchers in Australia identify a combination of four proteins in plasma that predicts amyloid positivity in cerebrospinal fluid, and correlates with progression to AD.
Exposing AD mice to multisensory gamma therapy induced 40-Hz waves in their brains, plus effects on amyloid, tau, microglia, blood vessels, and cognitive function.
Flortaucipir in former NFL players cropped up in regions known to be affected by chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but uptake was low compared with AD. Whether this reflects low tau deposition or poor tracer binding remain to be seen.
An electron microscopy study reveals a jumbled mess of membrane chunks and malfunctioning organelles, bound together by phosphorylated or truncated α-synuclein.