LOS ANGELES: New research identifies a cellular waste-sensing protein may be behind age-related macular degeneration, as well as Alzheimer’s.
A treatment targeting problem proteins in Alzheimer’s disease could also cure age-related macular degeneration (AMD), scientists behind a new study suggest.
The research found what was happening at the cellular level in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients was also occurring in the eyes of people with AMD.
Scientists have long sought the answer to why ‘junk’ proteins, including amyloid-beta, build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, interfering with normal cognitive function.
The protein TREM2 – which stands for “triggering receptor expressed in microglia” – is thought to be involved. In healthy brains, it senses waste and activates the ‘housekeeper’ cell it is part of. But the levels of TREM2 protein are insufficient in the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient.
The research found a similar pattern of lowered TREM2 in the retina of dry AMD patients.
As the small, sticky and toxic proteins are not properly cleaned by the microglial ‘housekeepers’, they may accumulate in the eye as drusen.
The team also found that high levels of a small fragment of RNA – known as microRNA-34a – was partly responsible for the lowered amounts of TREM2…