Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia are becoming common. To be true the way the cases of the two are increasing in almost all parts of the world, especially in the industrialized nations, is more than worrying.
Their detection is hard in the first place and harder is the cure of the two. But now at least we know as to which part of the brain they afflict first.
In a latest development a group of researchers in the United Kingdom has come out with the exact spot in the brain that is afflicted and impacted when a man or woman is affected by the two deadly diseases. The researchers claim that they have been able to zero in to the exact spot by using scans. These researchers are of the opinion that the area of the brain involved in Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia grows in teens and it degenerates rather very quickly during old age. The findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of journal PNAS.
But the researchers believe that though it is going to help in coming out with treating the diseases, they also confess that “much more research is needed into how to bring these exciting discoveries into the clinic”.
This also means that both the diseases actually emanate from the very same place. The study was carried out by researchers from the Medical Research Council team. They reportedly did MRI brain scans on as many as 484 people between the age group of eight and 85 years. All of these people were healthy and were not suffering from any major diseases.
It is needless to say that researchers involved in the study are excited. Prof Hugh Perry of the MRC was quoted by the BBC as saying, “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…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.”
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