Faulty Brain Plumbing to Blame in Alzheimer's, Mental Decline with Age -- and Can Be Fixed (IMAGE)

University of Virginia Health System

Faulty Brain Plumbing to Blame in Alzheimer's, Mental Decline with Age -- and Can Be Fixed

Caption

Obstructing lymphatic vessels (in green) in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease significantly increased the accumulation of harmful plaques in the brain. "What was really interesting is that with the worsening pathology, it actually looks very similar to what we see in human samples in terms of all this aggregation of amyloid protein," said researcher Jonathan Kipnis, PhD.

Credit

Courtesy Kipnis lab

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