Lab Notes: Brain Clutter May Be a Good Thing

 You can have your doctor match this to  keeping your brain clean.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/LabNotes/LabNotes/34267
Taking Out the Neurotrash
On the face of it, cleaning out cellular waste products in the brain would seem to be a possible strategy for combating dementia, which is often linked to the accumulation of damaged proteins. But researchers led by Thomas Sudhof, MD, of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif., have found that might not be the case.
Because protein misfolding has been implicated in a range of neurological diseases, it seemed possible that dysfunctional proteasomes -- structures that break down damaged proteins – might play a role. But in mice prone to neurodegeneration, inhibiting the proteasome activity unexpectedly slowed the degeneration and extended the animals' lifespan, Sudhof and colleagues reported in Science Translational Medicine.
In the study animals, proteasomal degradation of the unfolded form of a protein called SNAP-25 leads to the loss of a complex of proteins called SNARE. In turn, that leads to the death of brain cells and synapses -- but inhibiting the proteasomes prevented the deterioration.
In brain tissue samples from patients with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease, the SNARE complex was similarly impaired, suggesting that proteasome blockage might have a therapeutic value, the researchers argued.