Monday, January 19, 2015

Hibernating hints at dementia therapy

What is your doctor doing to make 100% sure that you won't get dementia, or 90%, or 80% or even as low as 10%.
ANYTHING AT ALL?
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30812438
Bears, hedgehogs and mice destroy brain connections as they enter hibernation, and repair them as they wake up.
A UK team discovered "cold-shock chemicals" that trigger the process. They used these to prevent brain cells dying in animals, and say that restoring lost memories may eventually be possible.
Experts have described the findings as "promising" and "exciting".
In the early stages of Alzheimer's, and other neurodegenerative disorders, synapses are lost. This inevitably progresses to whole brain cells dying.
But during hibernation, 20-30% of the connections in the brain - synapses - are culled as the body preserves precious resources over winter.
And remarkably those connections are reformed in the spring, with no loss of memory.
Hibernation lessons In experiments, non-hibernating mice with Alzheimer's disease and prion disease were cooled so their body temperature dropped from 37C to 16-18C.
Young diseased mice lost synapses during the chill and regained them as they warmed up.
Old mice also lost brain connections, but were unable to re-establish them.

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