Mounting evidence has suggested that toxic proteins that cause Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases spread from neuron to neuron in a slow crawl through the brain.

That news sparked some concern among the media and the general public: Could these proteins pass between people, too?

Highly unlikely, concluded scientists led by John Trojanowski, University of Pennsylvania, in a paper in the February 4 JAMA Neurology. Data from a large cohort of patients treated with human growth hormone from cadaver preparations suggest that injection of brain material does not spread Alzheimer’s (AD) or Parkinson’s disease (AD).

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Links

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23380910?dopt=Abstract
http://www.alzforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=3398

januari 28, 2013