Alzheimer’s breakthrough: ultrasound successfully treats disease in mice
Rodents found to have improved memories after ultrasound treatment, without any apparent damage to brain tissue
Scientists believe they may have found a new weapon in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease
– not in the form of a drug, but in focused beams of ultrasound.
While the approach has only been tested in mice, researchers said on Wednesday it proved
surprisingly good at clearing tangles of plaques linked to Alzheimer’s in the animals’ brains and
[5] improving their memory, as measured by tests such as navigating a maze.
In the past, high-energy ultrasound has been combined with injected microbubbles, which
vibrate in response to sound waves, to get drugs across the so-called blood brain barrier.
But the new research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, is the first
demonstration that ultrasound alone might have a beneficial effect on the memory-robbing
[10] condition. “Our research was very exploratory and we really didn’t expect to see such a massive
effect”, Juergen Goetz of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, one of the study authors,
said. “I’m really excited by this.”
After several weeks of treating mice that had been genetically altered to produce amyloid
plaques, the scientists found the ultrasound almost completely cleared the plaques in 75% of
[15] the animals, without apparent damage to brain tissue.
While there is still some debate as to whether plaques are a cause or a symptom of Alzheimer’s,
the experiment did find that the treated mice had improved memory, as measured by three
different tests, compared with untreated ones.
Goetz stressed that his research was at a very early stage and it would be several years before it
[20] could be tested in people. Several hurdles must be overcome first, including long-term checks
for side effects in animals and much more research into whether the approach will work with
thicker skulls and larger brains. While mice studies can give us an indication of how a treatment
may affect humans, they are only indications, as there are inherent differences between the
species, and between the model and the actual human disease.
[25] Dementia, of which Alzheimer’s is the most common form, affects close to 50 milion people
worldwide and that number is set to reach 135 milion by 2050, according to Alzheimer’s Disease
International, a non-profit campaign group.
theguardian.com
“Our research was very exploratory and we really didn’t expect to see such a massive effect”, (l. 10-11)
Because the coordinator and can establish various logical relations between ideas, certain expressions can be added to it to make the links clear.
The expression that can be added to and in order immediately explain the relationship established in the fragment is:
