Alzheimer's Research Pinpoints Antibodies That May Prevent Disease

ScienceDaily (July 7, 2009) — Antibodies to a wide range of substances that can aggregate to form plaques, such as those found in Alzheimer's patients, have been identified in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of healthy people. Levels of these antibodies decline with age and, in Alzheimer's patients, with increasing progression of the disease.

These findings by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers and outside collaborators, described in a paper to be published online July 6 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raise the possibility that many of us are carrying antibodies in our blood that could be playing a role in staving off or slowing the progression of Alzheimer's disease. This seems to be true even when we are young and healthy and would presumably have had little or no exposure to the substances that build up in the brain to cause this disorder.

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