Can Alzheimer's Disease Be Infectious?

Markus Tolnay and colleagues extracted sections of brain from mice expressing a mutant form of human tau protein, a component of the Alzheimer's neurofibrillary tangles. These brain extracts were injected into specific regions in the brains of wild-type mice. They observed that the brain extracts induced normal human tau proteins in the wild-type mice to assemble into neurofibrillary tangles. In addition, these newly formed tangles were able to spread to nearby regions in the brain.

Previously, the formation of tau inclusions observed in the neurodegenerative disease of the tauopathy family had not been thought to be contagious. Prion proteins are thought to infect and propagate by abnormally folding into a structure that is able to convert their normal counterparts into a similar abnormal structure.

This study opens new avenues in tauopathies research that will aim to understand how an abnormal form of tau can spread and how similar tauopathies and prion disease are.

Author contact:

Markus Tolnay (University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland)
E-mail: mtolnay@uhbs.ch

Abstract available online.

(C) Nature Cell Biology press release.

Message posted by: Trevor M. D'Souza