(18-10-10) Brain plaques do not cause Alzheimer's (we've been lied to for 20 years)

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Turning 30 years of established Alzheimer's dogma on its head,
researchers are now increasingly rejecting the theory that sticky plaques in
the brain are responsible for the mental degeneration caused by the disease.

"The plaque is not the main culprit in terms of toxicity," said Alzheimer's
doctor and researcher Scott McGinnis of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and
Women's Hospital.

In Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, patients' mental
functions steadily deteriorate, including their memories and ability to care
for themselves. Researchers have long believed that this degeneration was
caused by sticky brain plaques of a protein known as amyloid beta. Now, they
are instead blaming free-floating pieces of amyloid beta known as oligomers.

"If you say Alzheimer's, everyone immediately thinks that it's the plaques
that actually cause the disease. That couldn't be further from the truth," said
Andrew Dillin of the Salk Institute in California and the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute. "The data actually suggest these plaques are a form of protection
that the body tries to put on. So this is a sign that your brain was trying to
do something very useful and helpful to you, and the remnant was the formation
of amyloid plaques."

In a recent study, researchers genetically engineered mice that could produce
oligomers but could not form plaques. Compared with mice that could produce
both, the plaque-free mice did not fare any better.

Similarly, drugs designed to prevent the human brain from forming plaques have
consistently failed to deliver any improvement in Alzheimer's patients, and
have not slowed the progress of the disease.

If plaques are actually a bodily defense mechanism as the new theory suggests,
such drugs may actually make things worse.

"This [plaque] hypothesis is actually completely wrong, and we need a new way
to start looking at this disease," said Dillin. "This is actually not a viable
therapeutic avenue."

Sources for this story include: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS....

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