Does our immune system hold the key to beating Alzheimer’s disease?
Whereas no one is quite sure what the natural role of “healthy” amyloid beta is, tau is known to maintain protein filaments called microtubules inside nerve cells, which Fox calls “the railway tracks of the neurons’ transport system”. The consequences of aberrant amyloid beta and tau – formation of plaques and tangles in brain tissue – were seen by the German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer himself when he identified and studied this form of neurodegeneration in the 1900s. Some say that amyloid beta sets up the danger but tau sets it off: amyloid plaques build up around neurons in the brains of healthy people, but that’s only a problem if tangles caused by tau are present too.
Source: www.theguardian.com