Alzheimer's cognitive decline 'culprit' revealed
Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, February 17 (Intern reporter Zhang Jiaxin) According to a study published in the journal "Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia" on the 17th, advanced imaging technology developed by researchers at Yale University in the United States helped them confirm that the brain Disruption of synapses is at the root of cognitive deficits in Alzheimer's patients.
Scientists have believed for years that the loss of connections between brain cells leads to Alzheimer's-related symptoms, including memory loss, but the actual evidence for the effects of synaptic loss in the brain has been limited to the middle and late stages. A small number of brain biopsies and autopsies performed in patients with the disease.
However, the advent of positron emission tomography (PET) technology developed at Yale University has allowed researchers to observe synaptic loss in even living patients with mild Alzheimer's disease symptoms.
PET imaging scans of the new glycoprotein 2A (SV2A) allowed scientists to measure the metabolic activity of brain synapses in 45 people diagnosed with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers then measured each person's cognitive performance in five key areas: verbal memory, language skills, executive function, processing speed and visuospatial ability.
They found that loss of synapses, or connections, between brain cells was strongly associated with poor performance on cognitive tests.
They also found that synapse loss was a stronger indicator of cognitive decline than loss of total neuronal volume in the brain.
Researchers can now track patients' loss of synapses over time to better understand individual cognitive decline, said Christopher Van Dyke, director of the Yale Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and senior author of the paper. development process.
"These findings help us understand the neurobiology of the disease and could be important new biomarkers for testing the efficacy of new Alzheimer's drugs," said lead author Don McCain.