How do neurodegenerative diseases begin? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Many theories on how brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease begin point to proteins called amyloid beta and tau as accumulating and disrupting the function of neurons. Research by neuroscientist Paul Worley and colleagues at Johns Hopkins points to declining levels of a protein called NPTX2 as the initial event.

Worley: We think that this represents the process that is initiating the disease. It gives us some ideas about how to manipulate and alter maybe the course of that because we can work on, and we do have information on how to increase its expression, how to alter its function. And so it represents a new direction for the way people may approach the disease.   :28

Worley says ways to cause more NPTX2 to remain in the brain may mirror those for treatments already in place for treating depression, for example. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.