Alzheimer's Disease Cause & Cure: Condition Linked to Environmental Toxin: Study

• comments
• 
• 

A new study, published the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, has found a link between Alzeimer's disease and a toxin abundantly found in the environment.

While earlier years of research have produced no clue as to the cause of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox, Ph.D., of the Institute for EthnoMedicine in Jackson Hole, Wyo. and his team have looked into a certain group of people in Guam, and have found a link between the disease and an environmental toxin, reports CBS news.

"Our field work was sort of like reading an Agatha Christie novel,” Cox explained. “Who is the murderer?"

"We knew that other peoples on Guam, including the Filipinos, the Caroline islanders, U.S. military personnel, and expatriate Japanese did not get the disease, only [Guam's] Chamorro villagers,” he said. “So as ethnobotanists, we spent our time in the villages, rather than in the clinic, trying to figure out who the hidden killer is."

Cox and his team looked into the environmental exposures that the Chamorro villagers have and found that cycads, which are used to make tortillas, and flying foxes, a Chamorro delicacy, contained the neurotoxin BMAA.

The researchers then looked into BMAA and found that it is also present in cyanobacteria in blue-green algae. It is also found in South Florida fish and shellfish. Cox said that cyanobacteria are present all over the world.

The study looked into the link between BMAA and neurodegenerative diseases.

To do this, the researchers fed monkeys fruit that was dosed with BMAA. After 140 days, the monkeys developed neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid deposits in their brains, both of which are signs of degenerative conditions.

Monkeys that were fed BMAA-dosed fruits along with supplements containing the dietary amino acid L-serine had less tangles compared to those who only had the BMAA fruit. Still, they had more than those who were given only a placebo.

"When the neuropathology images started coming up, some of the neurologists started weeping. I couldn't speak," Cox said of the findings. "We knew that nobody has ever successfully produced [brain tangles and amyloid deposits] in an animal model."

The researchers tried to replicate the experiment and found the same results – any animal fed with BMAA developed the same degenerative signs.

Although the researchers found that L-serine lessened the tangles developed in the monkey's brains, Cox said that they can't say if it will work the same way for people as of now. Cox is currently working with other groups to test its effectiveness in helping patients suffering from early stage Alzheimer's.