New light shed on early stage Alzheimer’s disease
The disrupted metabolism of sugar, fat and calcium is part of the process that causes the death of neurons in Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now shown, for the first time, how important parts of the nerve cell that are involved in the cell’s energy metabolism operate in the early stages of the disease. These somewhat surprising results shed new light on how neuronal metabolism relates to the development of the disease.In the Alzheimer’s disease brain, plaques consisting of so called amyloid-beta-peptide (Aβ) are accumulated. It is also a well-