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The exercise has been found to help prevent Alzheimer's disease. A new Massachusetts General Hospital study could help explain how – and suggests how medicine might one day imitate this effect.
Exercise causes the birth of new nerve cells in the brain – a process called neurogenesis. The MGH The researchers sought to find out if induction of neurogenesis in mice with Alzheimer's disease could counteract the effects of the disease.
"And when we tried to do it with drugs or gene therapy, it did not work," says Rudolph Tanzi, professor of neurology at MGH and Harvard Medical School and lead author of the research. "But it's interesting that when we tried to exercise, the mice improved – cognitively better."
The key seems to be that the exercise "cleans" the environment in which the new neurons are born, thus reducing inflammation and helping them survive, according to Mr. Tanzi.
The conclusions, Thursday in the journal Science and funded in part by the non-profit fund Cure Alzheimer, could lead to treatments having the same effect in humans – but this take years, he says.
The cognitive improvements in mice whose neurogenesis resulted from exercise raised the following question: "What is the exercise so special?"
The answer: New nerve cells born of other methods have not survived. "It's like a baby born in a combat zone," says Tanzi, "and the new nerve cells are dying, and it's not enough to trigger new nerve cells in the brain because they will not survive." if you do it with exercise, they survive.And it's because the exercise, in addition, cleans the battlefield. "
Could drugs or gene therapy mimic these effects of exercise?
The exercise triggers the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which helps nerve cells to survive and cleans the local inflammation.
After finding that drugs and gene therapy failed to mimic the effects of exercise, "the next thing was very simple: we took the drug that induces neurogenesis that did not work the first time, but we also have the BDNF, and voila! We were able to mimic exercise, and the nerve cells were born, they survived and the mice became cognitively better. "
The drugs used are not ready for humans, he says, but that's the next step, and companies are already working on gene therapy and the relevant medications.
Dr. Sam Gandy, a leading expert in the field of Alzheimer's disease, based at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and unrelated to the study, believes that the power of exercise depends more on BDNF than results.
"We used to think that this exercise worked mainly on the brain thanks to the BDNF and it was the end of the story," says Gandy. "So, the story is clearly more complicated than that."
The study "also establishes the principle that a pill, an oral pill, could stimulate neurogenesis," he says. But adding BDNF to the mixture is more delicate: in the laboratory, it is normally administered by being injected into the brain "and this is not very practical for humans, especially if you want to take it every day."
For now, says Tanzi, "exercise is a great way to reduce the risk of contracting Alzheimer's disease."
And although this has not been proven in a clinical trial, "if you are in the early stages and you are exercising more, you will think that it will help slow down the disease." .
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