It is one of the most harmful and cruel diseases faced by man. Alzheimer’s, unfortunately known around the world for its devastating, irreversible and degenerative characteristics, has become the object of study by many scientists, universities and laboratories in recent decades, with the aim still being of prevention, treatment and diagnosis as the ultimate goal. have to be able to. Too far away, to try to face it and be able to end it.
But this disease does not affect everyone equally. A group of scientists today found a case of a man who was not affected by the E280A mutation, with which Alzheimer’s is known, until he was almost 70 years old.
This is patient J, who managed to ‘halt’ the progression of the disease until the age of 67, with it affecting him severely after the age of 72, as can be read in this article Country, This discovery has shed light on the problem and these scientists believe that a new path has been opened to find an effective treatment.
A protective mutation, the key
Colombian neuropathologist Diego Sepulveda Falla received this patient’s brain in 2019 at his laboratory in Hamburg, where he was able to examine it in detail. It was a male patient J. who died of pneumonia at the age of 74.
In the case of the Alzheimer’s patient, it is common to find amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles, both proteins that accumulate in brain cells, but this case was different because, as Sepulveda was able to verify, there had previously been but Hardly a second, something unusual indeed.
As it turned out, this man was able to prevent the progression of Alzheimer’s thanks to another protective mutation, COLBOS, and become resistant to it.
“Disease and cure live together in nature”
This is the second person who manages to stop the progression of this degenerative disease, after Aliria Rosa Piedrahita Villegas, who died in Colombia in 2020 at the age of 77, who had a protective mutation called Christchurch.
These two cases left a thread of hope for researchers who are optimistic after this second discovery, especially Sepúlveda: “What Alirea and Jay teach us is that disease and cure live together in nature. All you need is nature.” have to read and follow. If we succeed, we will be able to delay Alzheimer’s for 20 or 30 years”, claims the Colombian neurologist.
“In terms of therapy, this tells us that we can try to mimic this local effect, apparently in the entorhinal cortex. Perhaps in the future we will learn that in some cases there is a benefit from global therapy, throughout the brain.” , while in others others would be sufficient to protect this specific region”, argues the neuropathologist, whose article is published today in the journal Nature Medicine.
