One and three people in the United States know someone affected with Alzheimers Disease. Since this disease is so painful many people are contributing to the reasearch of this horrible disease. Alzheimers Disease comes from building-up plaque that is present in the brain . Doctors Doctors in Quebec have recently learned a fundamental reason for which the plaque may be developing in Alzheimer's patients, and this explanation could lead towards more accurate ways of fighting the disease. The cell in the brain, microglia, is the cell that naturally defeats the plaque in the brain. When this cell is afflicted with the disease it can no longer defeat the plaque and this is when the plaque grows and leads to the eventual complete loss of the patient's mental processes. Now doctors are trying to find a cure to make the microglia cell to successfully fight off plaque. They turned to a different type of microglia found in a different part of the body - inside bone marrow. They used mice to test their hypothesis, the scientists were pleased to find that the microglia from the bone marrow successfully fought off the plaque caused by Alzheimer's. This would be a huge advancement if the microglia cell works successfully in human trials. If the human trial is successful this won'tcure the Alzheimer's disease completely because the disease is not just invloved with the plaque in the brain. But this will allow patients to live with the disease for a longer period of time without as much cognitive loss.
