> transplanting the gut microbes of people with Alzheimer’s disease into healthy rats causes the animals to develop symptoms of the disease.
> human patients were found to have higher levels of inflammation-promoting bacteria within their fecal samples, which correlated with their degree of cognitive impairment.
> “The memory tests we investigated rely on the growth of new nerve cells in the hippocampus region of the brain. We saw that animals with gut bacteria from people with Alzheimer’s produced fewer new nerve cells and had impaired memory,”
> the team corroborated their findings in human cell cultures, showing that serum from patients with Alzheimer’s disease impaired the growth and functioning of these cells.
@trendless I do truly hope this leads to finally better understanding the disease and hopefully someday a way to treat it. Though I do wonder if this could be more of a symptom than a cause in its own way. The fact it had such a direct effect though is pretty telling. Guess we'll have to wait and see after more study, but either way this is huge progress.
@trendless Very interesting, an article caught my attention in the references of this study:
"Taurine is a free sulfur amino acid that is not incorporated in proteins. It is synthesized from methionine and cysteine by the rate-limiting enzyme cysteinesulfinic acid decarboxylase (CSD)"
"taurine increases several steps of adult neurogenesis and support a beneficial role of taurine on hippocampal neurogenesis in the context of brain aging."
@MaksiSanctum I wouldn't think so. Fecal transplants as done in this study first drastically reduce the subject's gut microbiome before repopulating it. It's not like contracting a pathogen.
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