Researchers Identify Weak Spot in Brain Linked to Alzheimer's Disease, Schizophrenia
Researchers of a new study have identified a weak spot in the brain that is linked to Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia and schizophrenia.
The study was conducted by the Medical Research Council team, United Kingdom, and has been published in the journal PNAS, BBC reports.
"Early doctors called schizophrenia 'premature dementia' but until now we had no clear evidence that the same parts of the brain might be associated with two such different diseases. This large-scale and detailed study provides an important, and previously missing, link between development, ageing and disease processes in the brain," said Professor Hugh Perry of the Medical Research Council.
The brain area that the scientists have pinpointed using scans develops late in adolescence and degenerates early during ageing.
For the study, the scientists took MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans of as many as 484 healthy people, aged between 8 and 85 years. The varied age group was maintained to examine the changes that the brain undergoes over time. The researchers studied the images and discovered that the parts of the brain that developed last, were in fact the ones that showed earliest signs of decline, Counselheal reports.
Lead researcher Dr. Gwenaëlle Douaud of Oxford University said that these regions were linked to "high order" information processing like sight and sound.
The team then studied the same regions of the brain in Alzheimer's or schizophrenia patients and found that the parts were affected in the same way.
"It raises important issues about possible genetic and environmental factors that may occur in early life and then have lifelong consequences. The more we can find out about these very difficult disorders, the closer we will come to helping sufferers and their families," Perry added.
However, the scientists said that "more research is needed into how to bring these exciting discoveries into the clinic," Russia Today reports.
