Key clue to what kills brain cells in Alzheimer's

THE mystery of how brain cells die in the course of Alzheimer's disease may finally have been solved, with the assistance of UK specialists

- Chris Riches

Scientists have debated for decades how the brain disease gradually destroys memory and lifelong skills.

But a team of researchers from Britain and Belgium has connected the abnormal proteins that build up in the brain with "necroptosis" - a form of cellular "suicide".

It is the loss of brain cells, which are known as neurons, that leads to the symptoms of Alzheimer's including memory loss.

Scientists have long noticed how sufferers also have a build-up of abnormal proteins called amyloid and tau. Now staff at the UK Dementia Research Institute in University College London and at a university in Leuven, Belgium, believe that they have "joined the dots" between the two effects.

Writing in the journal Science, they say abnormal amyloid building up in gaps between neurons leads to inflammation, which neurons do not like, and a change in their chemistry.

Purge