Because of SCIENCE!! Truly great news!
An international team of scientists have confirmed the discovery of a major cause of dementia, with important implications for possible treatment and diagnosis.
Professor Garth Cooper from The University of Manchester, who leads the Manchester team, says the build-up of urea in the brain to toxic levels can cause brain damage – and eventually dementia.
The work follows on from Professor Cooper's earlier studies, which identified metabolic linkages between Huntington's, other neurodegenerative diseases and type-2 diabetes.
The team consists of scientists from The University of Manchester, the University of Auckland, AgResearch New Zealand, the South Australian Research and Development Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University.
The latest paper by the scientists, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that Huntington's Disease – one of seven major types of age-related dementia – is directly linked to brain urea levels and metabolic processes.
Their 2016 study revealing that urea is similarly linked to Alzheimer's, shows, according to Professor Cooper, that the discovery could be relevant to all types of age-related dementias
Comments
Legit opened this thread expecting the body of the post to be "Watching Virginia Tech athletics".
Yeah, I thought we were supposed to play last night. What gives?
I have to admit, I remember feeling angry last night, but I can't remember why now.
I can 100% confirm this and cannot wait for our first ACC tournament game next week.
I just expected it to be "Watching your team blow a 21 point second half lead."
Very interesting article. Do you happen to have the link to the published study?
Just updated the link title, so you can see it wasn't as hidden.
Link to Splash Page on PNAS
The study is fascinating, but there is some caution needed here. This finding is not the cause of the disease. Urea accumulation explains the neuropathology observed across dementia types, but it is ultimately caused by an altered metabolic state. Neuronal cells are breaking down proteins as an energy source rather than sugar, leading to the accumulation of urea, which is indeed toxic. The actual cause of the disease lies in what prompts the cellular metabolic pathways to change in this way.
This often happens when media get ahold of scientific findings. The actual, published study does not say this is the cause of dementia, but the press report then misrepresents the findings.
Sorry, got all jargony there. I've been in grant-writing mode for the last month, most of it related to dementia/Alzheimer's.
As a son of someone suffering way too early from profound dementia, let me just say, "Go, dude. Go."
Truly a heartbreaking issue to deal with for a family and I can't imagine how it would affect an individual especially in the early stages. Go dude go indeed, and Godspeed.
Seconded!
Put simply (I think): You smell smoke. That doesn't mean it caused the fire. Smoke just happens to be a byproduct of fire.
It's a symptom not the cause...
It's an outcome, not the catalyst...
Oh sorry, I thought we were playing the game where we just repeat what other people say but change the wording to make it sound like an addition to the conversation.
Which is worse, breaking down the proteins or depositing the urea?
Can't have one without the other. The urea is a byproduct of protein breakdown. But the cells shouldn't be breaking down the proteins at the levels that they are, so that's the real problem (if this urea hypothesis is correct).
my attempt at ELI5:
It's like the brain is eating itself away and bathing in its own waste at the same time. If you could stop the brain from eating itself away, the high amounts of the toxic waste wouldn't be an issue. Not sure if the waste or the eating directly causes the dementia, but preventing the brain from eating itself is a good way to also prevent it from sitting in high amounts of toxic waste.
Edit: welp leave it to the biochem professor to both beat me to the response and have it be just as clear and a lot more eloquent than mine
Exactly. My first thought was that if dementia was truely only caused by urea, then a modified dialysis would have this whole problem solved. My best guess is this breakthrough allows for more targeted research and should enable earlier detection, but it does not provide the cure for dementia.
So theoretically, this could be a common pathophysiology, but do you think it is an inflammatory process in the case of diabetes, trauma with CTE, toxic with alcohol, etc that triggers the change?
If that's the case, how would a B-amyloid vaccine, or monoclonal Ab's to B-amyloid work to alter the metabolic transformation?
Most neurodegenerative disorders indeed have a common link in terms of inflammation, but whether that's early or late in the disease etiology is still not know. It's possible, and there are even some pretty strong data that suggest proteins like amyloid-β are present as part of the immune system that trigger (good) inflammation but it gets out of control.
I have always been skeptical of anti-Aβ antibody therapy. If one could completely abrogate the structural transformation of Aβ from its native state to disease form, it might be plausible. But so far, antibodies have completely struck out, because most of them are targeting aggregate forms that are too far into the disease state to be beneficial. We need to be looking further upstream. Likely Aβ deposition is a consequence of altered metabolic state, not causative, so intervening at this stage is likely to be ineffective, though it may ameliorate some symptoms.
In all seriousness though, its awesome that progress is being made there. Dementia is a bitch and a half
I wonder if they can look for a linkage between dementia and gout, given that the cause of gout is the excess uric acid that accumulates in the lower joints. Could instances of gout be a precursor for dementia?
This is somewhat concerning, as I've had a couple of gout attacks in the past two years. They suck, but dementia would suck way more.
It's funny you mention that, because my grandfather had bouts of gout, and ended up with dementia. And his father had alzheimer's and dementia.
There are a large number (about 10%) of patients with dementia that have a heavy alcohol use history.
I'd also be interested to see any association of gout and, if related, the application of gout medications as a prophylactic treatment in high-risk patients.
Not counting tailgating (trying to relate this to sports somehow), what's the percentage of "heavy" alcohol use in the general population though?
Does it significantly differ from that of dementia patients?
Unlikely, though not impossible. Despite the similarity in name, uric acid and urea have basically nothing in common in terms of either structure or biological origin. Uric acid is derived from the chemical modification of nucleotides (the stuff in your DNA). Urea is generated by degradation of proteins.
Uric acid degrades to urea, but you tend to not have a lot of circulating urea - it goes to your kidneys and is excreted in the urine. The blood-brain barrier is very tight, allowing very few compounds to pass. Urea accumulation in the brain of patients with dementia originates in the brain, if the above-linked study is correct, and is related to protein breakdown, not metabolism of uric acid.
There is potentially a linkage between type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, but that's not believed to be related to gout or uric acid. It's a cross-seeding of protein aggregation of amylin (from the pancreas, co-secreted with insulin) and amyloid-β (from the brain, and the primary entity in proteinaceous plaques in Alzheimer's patients). Some recent studies have called Alzheimer's "the diabetes of the brain," but largely because of the hypometabolic state that exists, linked to the protein breakdown being discussed in the present study.
Thank you, sir.
I have been waiting for someone to post a Science! gif. So I'll just do it myself...
As someone who's grandmother is suffering with this disease any advancement is a god send
Reading this and then some of y'all's responses (looking at you VTGM) has me all like...
Brings new meaning to the term "peabrain."
Edit: This poor attempt at a joke probably requires some scientific understanding of urine, which is how we excrete nitrogenous species such as urea. Get it, accumulation of urea in the brain, so... yea, I'm dumb.
But for real, neurodegeneration is extremely complicated problem and it's awesome that we have such great scientists that come from all over the world to America to work on it. While this group was from the UK, America is by far the leader in research in this field and hopefully will continue to be if we keep scientific understanding and progress along with education in the STEM fields a priority.
And best of luck to VTGM in your grant proposals. With funding so tight these days, and requirements to get funding so difficult, I hope you have much success.
Sh1thead is a horrible disease.
FWIW, I made the same joke to myself.
And thanks. The only part of my job that terrifies me is extramural funding. Teaching, mentoring students, and doing science - those are easy. Putting my livelihood in the hands of reviewers and relatively small budgets...that's something else entirely.
Lost Dad and both sisters to Alzheimer's. Runs rampant in our family. Hopefully, science will help prevent the inevitable for me and my son. God Bless.
prayers to you and your son