Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease that is, according to the National Institute on Aging, the most common form of dementia among older people. (1) Dementia is characterized by impairment in many mental faculties including, but not limited to: language, memory and perception. (2) Neuroinflammation is known, at this point in time, to play a role in AD. What exactly inflammation has to do with AD is currently a topic of much debate in scientific circles. An analysis of microarray data using microarray techniques identified 5 cytokines (immune system signals) to be important biomarkers of AD. (3) One of the cytokines identified in that study is IL-1, the production of which has been identified to be critical to the formation of the filamentous protein tangles that are a hallmark of AD. (4) This led a team of researchers at the University of California, Irvine to attempt inhibition of IL-1 signaling in a mouse model of AD with the application of an antibody directed against IL-1R (the receptor for IL-1) with the hope of improving AD symptoms. (5) This study is the focus of this blog post.
The researchers first did a behavioral study to test the efficacy of the antibody treatment on the cognitive abilities of their murine subjects. These mice are not your average laboratory mice; they have had three genes introduced into their cells that result in the accumulation of protein deposits and neuronal miscommunication that plague AD patients. (6) After treatment with the anit-IL-1R antibody, mice showed considerable improvement over non-treated mice in terms of their ability to navigate a water maze and to recall traumatic events (see figure below).
