Alzheimer's disease may be infectious
Contaminated surgical instruments or injections, such as human growth hormone, may pose a rare but potential risk, they speculate in Nature. The theoretical hunch comes from post-mortem brain studies in eight patients, BBC News reports. The UK experts stress that their findings are inconclusive and do not mean Alzheimer's is infectious. People cannot catch Alzheimer's from coming into contact with other people with the condition. Brain changes Alzheimer's is a type of dementia that is more common with increasing age. People with a family history of the condition are also at increased risk of developing it. In Alzheimer's, brain cells die off and, over time, the brain shrinks, affecting many of its functions. Scientists can also see the effects of the disease under the microscope. here are two telltale signs - abnormal clusters of protein fragments, called amyloid plaques, and tangles of another protein known as tau. It was when Dr John Collinge and colleagues from University College London were studying the brains of recently deceased CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) patients that they stumbled across one of these Alzheimer-like signs. Seven of the eight patients they studied had amyloid deposits in the brain, which was surprising given their relatively young ages (between 31 and 51) and the fact that they had no family history of Alzheimer's. All of the deceased had caught their CJD from contaminated human growth hormone injections, given to them as children.
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