Current Alzheimer Research - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2004

The serotonin 5-HT4 receptor mediates many physiological effects in the central nervous system. The recent molecular identification of 5-HT4 receptors and the development of selective 5-HT4 receptor ligands have led to many important new insights into the signalling pathways and the physiological roles of these G protein-coupledreceptors in neurones. With respect to neurodegenerative disorders, it is suggested that 5- Read More

Conformational changes of Alzheimer's β-amyloid protein (AβP) enhance its neurotoxicity and play important roles in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Recent studies have suggested that a common mechanism is based on diverse “conformational diseases”. They share similarity in their formation of β-sheet containing amyloid fibrils by disease-related proteins and the introduction of apoptotic degenerati Read More

Tau is a microtubule associated protein that is also the main component of the aberrant filaments that form aberrant structures like the neuropil threads or the neurofibrillary tangles, found in the brain of Alzheimer's disease patients. The assembly of tau aberrant filaments could be reproduced in vitro by using a high concentration of tau protein or, at lower protein concentrations, by adding some compounds like pol Read More

Oxidative stress, linked to Abeta-lipid interactions, plays a pathogenetic role in Alzheimer's disease. We investigated modifications of lipid peroxidation products in plasma of 52 AD patients, 42 healthy controls and 16 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease where oxidative stress also plays a pathogenetic role. Final lipid peroxidation products were measured in plasma by thiobarbituri Read More

Age- related neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer's disease (AD), are an important health problem globally. AD is clinically characterized by loss of memory, reasoning and speech. The frequency of the disease reaches to 20-40% in the population over the age of 85. Autopsy findings have indicated the presence of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brains of patients with AD. These two le Read More

It has been shown in vitro that β-amyloid (Aβ) is transported by P-glycoprotein (P-gp). Previously, we demonstrated that Aβ immunoreactivity is significantly elevated in brain tissue of individuals with low expression of P-gp in vascular endothelial cells. These findings led us to hypothesize that P-gp might be involved in the clearance of Aβ in normal aging and particularly in Alzheimer's disease (AD). As we were interested in the Read More

One of the known risk factors for developing Alzheimer disease (AD) is hyperhomocysteinemia. The latter may result from mutations of the genes coding for three key enzymes involved in homocysteine metabolism (methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase [MTHFR], methionine synthase [MS], and cystathionine beta-synthase [CBS]). Although MTHFR and MS polymorphisms have been shown to be positively associated with AD in Read More

The number of people with cognitive impairment is rising in parallel with changing demographics. As health care budgets are coming under increasing strain with regard to the provision of nursing care, there is a substantial need for effective therapies which encompass greater understanding of the components of dementia that finally necessitate admission to residential or nursing home care. Behavioural and ps Read More

To explore the correlation between cerebral functional alterations revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and Alzheimer disease- (AD)-like tau hyperphosphorylation, we injected bilaterally 2 μl each of 20 mM isoproterenol (IP), a PKA activator, or of saline as a vehicle control into the hippocampus of rats. FMRI was employed to measure the intensity of BOLD signal, one of the cerebral functional marker Read More