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Wagamaga OP t1_j3d7zij wrote

A new USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology study challenges existing ideas of how buildup of a protein called amyloid beta (Aβ) in the brain is related to Alzheimer’s disease.

While buildup of amyloid protein has been associated with Alzheimer’s-related neurodegeneration, little is known about how the protein relates to normal brain aging, said University Professor Caleb Finch, the study’s senior author and holder of the ARCO/William F. Kieschnick Chair in the Neurobiology of Aging at the USC Leonard Davis School.

To explore the levels of Aβ in human brains, the researchers analyzed tissue samples from both healthy brains and brains of patients with dementia. More severe Alzheimer’s cases were indicated by higher Braak staging scores, a measurement of how widely signs of Alzheimer’s pathology are found within the brain.

The analysis revealed that older, cognitively healthy brains showed similar amounts of dissolvable, non-fibrillar amyloid protein as brains of Alzheimer’s patients. But, as the researchers expected, the brains of Alzheimer’s patients had higher amounts of insoluble Aβ fibrils, the form of amyloid protein that aggregates to form the telltale “plaques” seen in the disease, said Max Thorwald, the study’s first author and a postdoctoral researcher at the USC Leonard Davis School.

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.12896

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adnbenji t1_j3fwu33 wrote

What's the summary of this for a dumb person like me? While trying to disprove the idea that cumul of Amyloid Beta is linked to Alzheimer's, they found it could in fact be right?

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ThatAndresV t1_j3g6nxv wrote

I asked OpenAI to summarise as if I was a grade 6 student and it told me:

A new study challenges existing ideas about the relationship between amyloid beta protein build-up in the brain and Alzheimer's. The study found that older, cognitively healthy brains had similar levels of one type of amyloid protein as brains of Alzheimer’s patients, although the Alzheimer's brains had higher levels of another type of amyloid protein that can form plaques linked to the disease.

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ThatAndresV t1_j3g6t0y wrote

And then I asked… Human: what are the implications for other studies? AI: The findings from this study suggest that further research is needed to fully understand how amyloid beta proteins are linked to normal brain aging as well as how they may cause Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, this research may help inform the development of new treatments for Alzheimer's that are specifically designed to target amyloid beta build-up.

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