CHICAGO: Techniques borrowed from prion research are improving understanding of how plaques accumulate in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease.
The ability of the bizarre prion protein to cause an array of degenerative brain conditions may help solve a puzzle in Alzheimer’s research — why the disease sometimes kills within a few years, but usually causes a slow decline that can take decades. By adopting tools used to study the prion protein, PrP, researchers have found variations in the shape of a protein involved in Alzheimer’s that may influence how much damage it causes in the brain…