by Although we don’t yet fully understand what causes dementia, many scientists believe that the formation of “amyloid plaques” and “tau tangles” in the brain may be a precursor to Alzheimer’s.
This appears to happen when deposits of the two proteins form around brain cells.
And according to a recent study published in Nature Neuroscience, another protein – Sox9 – may be responsible for eliminating them.
Speaking to Baylor University, study co-author Dr. Benjamin Deneen found that increasing levels of the protein that “regulates astrocyte functions during aging” helped remove plaques from the brain “like a vacuum cleaner” in mice.
Why could the protein help strengthen the immune system against dementia?
In this study, it appeared to have a ripple effect on star-shaped cells in the brain called astrocytes.
First author Dr. Dong-Joo Choi said: “Astrocytes perform various tasks that are essential for normal brain function, including facilitating brain communication and memory storage.”
“As the brain ages, astrocytes show profound functional changes; however, the role that these changes play in aging and neurodegeneration is not yet clear.”
Therefore, “researchers manipulated the expression of the Sox9 gene to assess its role in maintaining astrocyte function in the aging brain and Alzheimer’s disease models,” explained Dr. Deneen.
They took mice that had already developed cognitive problems such as memory loss and had amyloid plaques forming in their brains and lowered or increased their levels of Sox9.
After monitoring and testing the mice’s cognitive strength for six months, the researchers examined their amyloid plaque levels.
While removing Sox9 expression was associated with increased plaque formation, possibly due to the reduced astrocyte cell complexity associated with the change, overexpression appeared to increase the cells’ cleansing performance while producing better results on cognitive tests.
“We found that increasing Sox9 expression caused astrocytes to take up more amyloid plaques and remove them from the brain like a vacuum cleaner,” explained Dr. Deneen.
“Most current treatments focus on neurons or try to prevent the formation of amyloid plaques. This study suggests that improving astrocytes’ natural ability to clean may be just as important.”
What does this research mean?
So far, researchers warn that we need a lot more research to figure out what this means for humans.
But Dr. Choi said“An important point of our experimental design is that we worked with mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease that had already developed cognitive impairments such as memory deficits and had amyloid plaques in the brain.”
“We believe these models are more relevant to what we see in many patients with Alzheimer’s symptoms than other models in which such experiments are performed before plaques form.”
