Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences have discovered that a protein found in patients with Alzheimer’s disease can disrupt brain signals and therefore may contribute to the memory losses of Alzheimer’s disease.

According to the report in the "Journal of Neuroscience," 2001, Vol. 21, RC 120, pp. 1-5, the characteristic plaques seen by scientists and physicians in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients may not be the result of the disease but a cause. (At autopsy, these characteristic plaques – first noted in 1906 – are used to confirm Alzheimer’s.

The NIEHS scientists said they had demonstrated in rat brains that the major protein of these plaques binds to a receptor in the brain, thus blocking the signals, or currents, that are thought to be involved in learning and memory. The protein is called Beta-amyloid peptide and is found in the brains and plaques of humans as well as animals.

Many researchers have speculated that the protein had such a memory-blocking role, but this work for the first time establishes this functional link between the plaques seen at autopsy and the failure in brain functioning. Jerrel L. Yakel, Ph.d., senior scientist on the study, said that better drug therapies could result from finding chemicals that prevent the chemical binding and thus keep the brain signals flowing.