Prions may cause Alzheimer's, says Nobel winner
SEATTLE, Oct 20, 1999 (Reuters Health) -- Dr. Stanley Prusiner, who won
a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his discovery that prions cause certain
neurodegenerative diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, now
suggests that prions may play a role in other neurological diseases,
including Alzheimer's disease, PARKINSON'S disease, and amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease).
``In all of these neurodegenerative diseases there are abnormal protein
deposits,'' Prusiner pointed out in a plenary address at the annual
meeting of the American Neurological Association.
Prions, tiny protein particles, are thought to be infectious agents
spread through transplants or, it is speculated, through eating infected
meat. They are best known as the cause of bovine spongiform
encephalitis, or ``mad cow'' disease.
Prusiner, of the University of California at San Francisco, explained
that prion infection causes proteins in the brain to change from a
normal spiral conformation to an abnormal conformation called a
beta-sheet. He suggested that prion-induced protein changes can be seen
in the lesions characteristic of Alzheimer's disease.
``In Alzheimer's, this misfolding of proteins leads to plaques and
tangles in the brain,'' Prusiner told meeting attendees. ``These are
'misprocessed' proteins.'' He speculated that prions may also be
responsible for changes in other brain disease, for example, in
``Parkinson's disease there are Lewy bodies, while in frontotemporal
dementia there are long fibrils of tau.''
Prusiner noted that ``something is pushing this process, although we
don't know what it is. It's not a chronic infection like AIDS, and it
may be 10 different things.'' The search is on, he said, for drugs that
prevent prion-induced abnormal protein folding.
Copyright © 1996-1999 Reuters Limited.
~~~~
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
[log in to unmask]
^^^^
\ /
\ | / Today’s Research
\\ | // ...Tomorrow’s Cure
\ | /
\|/
`````
