From: deputyfife23x@gmail.com   
      
   #AlzheimerNews   
   Alzheimer's not just one disease, scientists say   
      
   Israeli researchers propose that the degenerative brain disorder can result   
   from separate causes that must be classified and treated separately.   
      
   By ISRAEL21c Staff	 NOVEMBER 5, 2015, 8:38 AM   
   Image via Shutterstock.comImage via Shutterstock.com   
   SHARETWEETCOMMENTEMAIL   
   Health professionals should consider Alzheimer's disease as a collection of   
   disorders to be treated separately, according to an Israeli-American   
   biomedical research team led by Prof. Ehud Cohen and postdoctoral fellow   
   Tziona Ben-Gedalya at Hebrew    
   University of Jerusalem's Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada.   
      
   In a groundbreaking paper recently published in the EMBO Journal, the Israelis   
   built on the understanding that several different neurodegenerative conditions   
   - such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's - stem from the abnormal folding and   
   aggregation of    
   certain brain proteins.   
      
   The abnormality is often caused by an aging-related decline in the activity of   
   proteins that normally assist other proteins to fold properly. But it also can   
   occur because of an infectious misfolded protein (called a prion, as in mad   
   cow disease) or a    
   familial genetic mutation.   
      
   Cohen's lab studies the mechanisms that link the aging process to late-onset   
   disorders associated with toxic protein aggregation in cells. This latest   
   research showed that the development of Alzheimer's disease in certain   
   families, and of a familial    
   prion disorder in other families, originate from similar mutational patterns   
   and malfunction of a specific protein.   
      
   "This study provides important new insights: first, it shows that the   
   development of distinct neurodegenerative disorders stems from a similar   
   mechanism," said Cohen. "More importantly, it indicates that Alzheimer's   
   disease can emanate from more than one    
   mechanism, suggesting that it is actually a collection of diseases that should   
   be classified."   
      
   He suggested that successful Alzheimer's therapies have not been created   
   because clinical studies have failed to distinguish between study patients   
   with Alzheimer's symptoms.   
      
   "It is essential to carefully characterize and classify the mechanisms that   
   underlie Alzheimer's disease, in order to allow for the development of novel   
   therapies that can be prescribed to the individual patient according to their   
   relevant disease    
   subtype," said Cohen.   
      
   The paper was co-authored by scientists from the Institute for Medical   
   Research Israel-Canada, Hebrew University-Hadassah Institute for Dental   
   Sciences, Tel Aviv University and the US National Institutes of Health.   
      
      
      
   http://www.israel21c.org/alzheimers-not-just-one-disease-scientists-say/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)