A study uses fluorescent amyloid-binding dyes and high-resolution confocal spectral imaging analysis on brain slices from patients with Alzheimer's disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy, and finds that the different disease types were associated with distinct amyloid-beta prion strains; further, the study suggests that mutant amyloid-beta adopts the disease-causing, self-propagating structure of the prion, which imparts its pathological conformation on previously normal amyloid-beta to form more prions.
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Article #17-14966: "Structural heterogeneity and intersubject variability of Aβ in familial and sporadic Alzheimer's disease," by Carlo Condello et al.
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences