Researchers at The University of Queensland have a plausible and new Australian Alzheimer’s Breakthrough. It’s a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. The amyloid ‘plaques’ sit between neurons. The neurofibrillary ‘tangles’ are found inside the neurons, where tau proteins clump into a thick, insoluble mass. This causes tiny filament microtubules to become twisted, disrupting transportation of nutrients and organelles along them…as described, like twisting up a vacuum cleaner tube! The key, to clear the defective beta amyloid, and tau proteins. The Alzheimer’s world-wide epidemic, tandem to the rapid spread of our North American: eating, marketing, food production, behaviour, lifestyle, and disastrous ‘new’ social patterns,…..some 50 millions worldwide are suffering from this disease. Soon this number will escalate and in compound fashion!
The ramifications to those families, example: Gordon Kaye Head Injury, the demand emotionally, and healthwise to them, and their respective social structures is staggering. But now Australian Alzheimer’s Breakthrough.
The Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland, published in Science Translational Medicine, used “a focused, ultrasound, therapeutic technique, of non-invasive, oscillating, super-fast sound beams”. The blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain against bacteria, is thereby gently opened up, allowing the microglial cells to activate. These waste-removal cells are thus able to clear out the toxic beta amyloid clumps, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. Microglial cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they’re able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s. A 75% success with rats, with zero surrounding brain tissue damage…and improved performances in the tasks of rat maze negotiation, new-object recognition, and avoidance of negatives is stunning.
Australian Alzheimer’s Breakthrough human trials, after sheep, hoped for in 2017! But it may be half a decade, or more, before this is available! “We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics,” one of the team, Jürgen Götz, said in a press release. “The word ‘breakthrough’ is often misused, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach.”
