How body fights Alzheimer’s disease

Friday August 19th, 2011

German researchers have documented for the first time how the immune system battles to thwart the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

A team at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Universitätsklinik Freiburg showed that macrophages, scavenger cells in the immune system, play a key role in the process by reducing harmful deposits in the brain that are responsible for the disease.

The researchers also demonstrated how chemokines, which are special cell-signalling proteins, help in the process.

The results of the study have now been published in the renowned Journal of Neuroscience.

Professor Josef Priller, Director of Neuropsychiatry at Campus Charité Mitte, who led the study, used an animal model to show which particular types of macrophages are active.

Previous academic studies believed that the defence reaction could not be handled by the immune cells of the brain, the microglia, because they themselves are damaged by the pathological process.

But the Charité team found that instead, specialised bone marrow-derived macrophages are activated and directed into the brain to remove the toxic deposits.

Prof Priller says he hopes the discovery will lead to new treatment approaches for Alzheimer's disease that have relatively few side effects.

"In future we hope to be able to systematically introduce specialised scavenger cells to the brain and thus speed up the reduction of Alzheimer's disease deposits," he adds.

Distinct and non-redundant roles of microglia and myeloid subsets in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. Mildner et al. Journal of Neuroscience, August 2011, 11159 –11171. DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6209-10.2011

Tags: Brain & Neurology | Elderly Health | Europe

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