Alzheimer’s disease is a mental disorder that causes memory loss, learning disability, shortened attention span, etc. Severe cases of Alzheimer’s disease may cause the entire body to shut down. For many years, Alzheimer’s disease remained mysterious with no solutions to cure. However, many scientists and researchers have contributed to Alzheimer's disease and improved medical treatments recently.

Symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease only appear after the disease has significantly developed, making early diagnosis difficult. However, an Alzheimer’s research team in Gwangju, South Korea, believes that they have found a way to diagnose an Alzheimer’s disease patient through a simple MRI picture.

They gathered the data of 14,000 people and identified 8,000 individuals that were at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in the future. They plan to compile this data to create a standard for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease through MRI images.

https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/50993/study-finds-astrocytes-critical-in-progression-of-huntingtons-disease/

The cause of Alzheimer’s disease has puzzled scientists for a long period. It is commonly known that a build-up of toxic proteins called B-amyloid causes the brain to lose its function. However, the reason for this build-up was long unknown.

Recently, a joint research team led by Lee Chang-Joon and Ryu Hoon identified star-shaped cells called astrocytes to be the primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Normal astrocytes are responsible for maintaining brain constancy. However, when astrocytes increase in size and number, these cells become reactive astrocytes that kill nearby nerve cells. The human body tries to remove the reactive astrocytes by releasing a toxic chemical called hydrogen peroxide(H2O2). However, hydrogen peroxide also kills the nerve cells in the brain. Due to these processes, the simple removal of Beta-amyloid made dementia impossible to cure.

Knowing the cause of diseases is crucial to developing treatments, the new researches are highly expected to shed light on new medical treatments for Alzheimer's disease.

참고 자료: https://n.news.naver.com/article/020/0003324254
https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-are-signs-alzheimers-disease
http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=55302

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