A medical procedure transferred a key component of Alzheimer’s disease from one person to another, finds a new study published today in the journal Nature. The discovery suggests the seeds of the devastating neurodegenerative disease are transmissible.
“It is a new way of thinking about the condition,” John Collinge, a neurologist at the University of College London in the United Kingdom, who led the new research, told reporters during a media briefing.
Three years ago, Collinge and colleagues found a disturbing collection of clumps in the brains of eight patients who had died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD, a fatal brain disorder.
The majority of the patients had sizable aggregates of amyloid-β (Aβ), the , in their brain tissue as well as in the brain’s blood vessels. As children, the patients had received human growth hormone isolated from cadavers to treat various growth deficiencies.
“This was unexpected and completely out ...
