One of the great puzzles around the previously incurable Alzheimer's disease is why 70 percent of those affected are female and the course for them is more serious on average than in men. Now it is said that a certain hormone should be responsible for this - attempts with rodents indicate this. A team around the neuroscientist Keqiang Ye from Emory University School of Medicine published his findings in a study in the "Nature" magazine.
Shortly before the last menstrual period in the life of a woman - this begins the menopause - the pituitary gland pours out the follicle -stimulating hormone (FSH). At the same time, the first Alzheimer's symptoms often use. Estrogen from the ovaries, on the other hand, which has long been traded as a possible trigger for dementia, remains constant at the time. Ye and his colleagues suspect that FSH interacts with the C/EBPβ/AEP signal path that is central to the development of Alzheimer's pathology. In order to check their thesis, the group of demented laboratory mice took the ovaries and then blocked FSH with the help of antibodies. As the team was able to demonstrate, the signal path in the nerve cells was inactivated.
Not only that: The plaques in the brain of the Alzheimer's mice formed, and the cognitive symptoms also disappeared. The team injected both female and male rodents in a further test series FSH. This in turn worsened the symptoms, and plaques formed in the hippocampus and in other regions. The results indicate that the FSH hormone plays an important role in the creation of Alzheimer's via the C/ Ebpβ/ AEP signal path. Since men are also increasingly distributing FSH with increasing age, the researchers hope to be able to test a healing treatment for both genders in the future that is based on this hormone.
Alzheimer's demonstration occurs primarily from the age of 65 and leads to an increasing loss of neurons and cognitive skills. Years before the first clinical symptoms appear, beta-amyloid plaques and dew fibrils form in the brain of the affected ones, which consist of harmful proteins.
