Health Happenings

Key Alzheimer’s Enzyme Identified

Researchers have finally identified a long-sought enzyme suspected of playing a key role in Alzheimer’s disease. This breakthrough could encourage drug companies to develop new treatments.

Scientists have theorized that an unidentified chemical, which they called gamma secretase, facilitates the onset of Alzheimer’s by making one of two cuts in a long, string-like protein in the brain. That chemical has now been identified as presenilin 1, which has already been linked to a rare inherited form of Alzheimer’s that strikes people in their 30s and 40s.