New leads on treating dementia and Alzheimer's
A new study provides an explanation for why clinical trials of drugs targeting proteins in the brain that were thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer’s have failed.
The research project, led by the University of Adelaide, assembled evidence from a wide range of human studies and animal models of dementia-related diseases to show that inflammation is a major cause, not just a consequence.
They show that many genes linked with dementia regulate our susceptibility and response to inflammatory damage; a result that potentially opens the way for testing existing anti-inflammatory drugs as a treatment.