Discovering a new path can save memories of patients with Alzheimer's disease

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Scientists believe that people with Alzheimer's disease can improve their memory by "opening" the blood vessels in the brain.

Alzheimer's disease is known to reduce blood flow to the brain, and new studies have now shown that it could be due to white blood cells that adhere to the walls of blood vessels.

In the study of mice, memory and brain performance quickly improve when scientists eliminate these barriers, which could be a way of "changing the rules of the game" if the same mechanism were applied to millions of Alzheimer's disease patients worldwide, according to researchers.

The researchers found the results by accident, when Nozomi Nishimura, a professor at the Maing School of Cornell University, attempted to put clots in the blood vessels of Alzheimer's disease-stricken rats for see the effects.

Nishimura worked with Professor Chris Shafer over the past decade to discover that only 2% of the capillaries were suffering from this blockage or "malfunction".

But the cumulative effect of this small amount of obstruction recorded a general decrease of about 20% of blood flow in the brain, due to the slowness of the vascular currents resulting from the rupture of the capillaries resulting work.

Recent studies suggest that the deficit of blood circulation in the brain is an early symptom of dementia, suggesting that this could be useful for diagnosis.

To test their theory that white blood cells are attached to the capillaries, the smallest blood vessels in the brain, team members have "opened" the vessels.

They gave an antibody to mice with Alzheimer's disease, which overlapped with white blood cells adhering to the walls of the capillaries.

The results, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, resulted in increased blood flow to the brain, which improved memory function in just a few hours, even in older mice with advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease.

Although the experiment has borne fruit in mice, researchers are still unsure whether it will work in humans.

Professor Schaefer said that after identifying the cellular mechanism by which blood flow could be improved, the pathway became clearer in identifying the appropriate drugs or therapeutic approaches needed to save patients' memory.