□ Jianping
The team of Professor Ye Keqiang, School of Life and Health, Shenzhen University of Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences recently published an article in the journal Nature, revealing for the first time that increased follicle-stimulating hormone is an important reason why women are more likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease (AD) than men. reason.
Alzheimer's disease is an age-dependent neurodegenerative disease that mainly causes dementia in the elderly, with symptoms such as cognitive impairment, memory imbalance and abnormal behavior.
There are currently more than 50 million confirmed patients worldwide, and with the arrival of an aging society, this number is expected to increase significantly to 152 million in 2050.
There are even statistics showing that about 1 person in the world is diagnosed with AD every 3 seconds.
And epidemiological surveys show that the number of women with Alzheimer's disease is twice as high as that of men.
Previously, people had not been clear about the cause of this phenomenon. Now, Professor Ye Keqiang's research has clearly answered the mystery that has plagued mankind for many years.
The pathological phenomenon of AD is extremely complex. The results of brain tissue examination show that AD patients generally have senile plaques formed by a large number of β-amyloid deposits outside the brain nerve cells, intracellular neurofibrillary tangles formed by abnormal phosphorylation of Tau protein, neuron loss, Neural dystrophy, synapse loss and other pathological phenomena, but the related pathogenesis is still unclear.
Professor Ye's team has been devoted to the research on the pathogenesis, early diagnosis and drug development of neurodegenerative diseases for many years. On the basis of systematically summarizing the achievements of the team's hundreds of cutting-edge academic papers, they proposed an original theory: C/EBPβ/AEP neural signal Activation of pathways is a central driver of neurodegenerative diseases.
Based on this theory, Prof. Ye's team studied the hormones whose concentrations vary sharply in women before and after menopause, and tested which hormones can selectively activate the C/EBPβ/AEP pathway.
In the end, they found an important pathogenic factor of increased follicle-stimulating hormone - the level of follicle-stimulating hormone in menopausal women increases sharply to more than 10 times, while the corresponding level in older men may only increase by about 3 times.
A spike in follicle-stimulating hormone binds to receptors on the surface of neurons in the brain, activating these pathways in the brain, leading to Alzheimer's disease.
FSH is a hormone in women's body, which can promote the growth of follicles. If the secretion of this hormone in the body is too high, it will affect the normal fertility of women, and its production is also regulated by the reverse regulation of ovarian estrogen.
The researchers said that during women's menstruation, estrogen increases, and brain regulation will inhibit the increase of follicle-stimulating hormone. After menopause, estrogen decreases, and follicle-stimulating hormone is no longer suppressed, so women are more likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. disease.
But at present, there is still no more ideal way to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
The traditional methods of clinical intervention for Alzheimer's disease include drug intervention, genetic intervention, rehabilitation training, etc. However, they can only improve the symptoms, but cannot prevent the development of the disease.
Professor Ye's research may provide a new research direction for the prevention of Alzheimer's disease. The next step of the research team will also conduct in-depth research on the mechanism level of the relationship between specific risk genes and follicle-stimulating hormone.
Professor Ye Keqiang said that eating a balanced diet, maintaining an optimistic attitude, avoiding excessive stress, exercising reasonably, and ensuring adequate sleep time and quality will help reduce the probability of inflammation in women and appropriately delay the arrival of menopause. To a certain extent It can delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.