Texas: A new study has found that the presence of iron in the brain may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease.
A new imaging study by researchers has shown for the first time that iron is more reactive in the presence of oxygen at sites in the brain where Alzheimer’s-related amyloid-beta deposits occur.
A team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted research on the new imaging technique, which was published in Science Advances.
“The link between iron redox and Alzheimer’s has been like a black box,” said corresponding author of the study Professor Yi Lu from the University of Texas. The most interesting thing is that we now have techniques that allow us to look inside this black box and understand the entire process in detail.
About a decade ago, scientists discovered ferroptosis. This is a process dependent on the amount of iron in the body that causes cell destruction and causes neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
In magnetic resonance images of the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, scientists observed higher levels of iron in their brains, but the technique did not distinguish between the types of iron in the brain.
Overall, the research revealed that iron may play a role in brain cell damage in Alzheimer’s patients.
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