Alzheimer's disease drug treats traumatic brain injury

by Poonam Singhal



The destructive cellular pathways activated in Alzheimer's disease are also triggered following traumatic brain injury, say researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).

Researchers presented that deactivating these pathways in part by using a gamma secretase inhibitor - a class of Alzheimer's disease drugs currently being tested - reduced loss of neurons in animal models of traumatic brain injury and protected the animals against motor and cognitive deficits.

"The goal for both diseases is to prevent neuronal cell death, and this study suggests that one therapy could possibly work for both," says the study's lead author, neuroscientist Mark Burns, PhD, an assistant professor at GUMC.

Both disorders are associated with build-up of beta amyloid, a toxic brain peptide. This substance is commonly found in the brains of elderly patients who died from Alzheimer's disease, but has also been found in a third of traumatic brain injury victims, some of whom are children, Burns says. It is also known that people who experience such a brain injury have a 400 percent increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

In this study, researchers used mice that were either treated with DAPT, an experimental gamma secretase inhibitor, or mice which were "BACE knock-outs" – so called because they were genetically altered in such a way that they could not produce beta secretase. In unaltered and untreated "normal" mice, brain injury resulted in a rapid accumulation of beta amyloid, along with cognitive and motor deficits. But DAPT and BACE knock-out mice had brain lesions that were as much as 70 percent smaller than control animals and they experienced minimal impairment.

The findings further cement the connection between Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injury, Burns says, and show that "modulation of beta and gamma secretase may provide novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of traumatic brain injury."


(Poonam Singhal -- sub-editor compiled and published Alzheimer's disease drug treats traumatic brain injury at HealthNewsTrack on July 13, 2009 sourced from Georgetown University Medical Center - http://gumc.georgetown.edu/)

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