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In the face of dementia, what else can we do besides worrying?

2022-9-16 

The true cause of Alzheimer's disease is still unknown. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) currently classifies dementia as a brain disease with multiple forms or subtypes of neurocognitive impairment and degeneration. For a long time, the medical profession has been trying to improve dementia. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration FDA approved the new drug Aduhelm for marketing, hoping to slow down the cognitive deterioration of Alzheimer's disease patients by removing β-amyloid plaques in the brain. However, the efficacy of the treatment has been confirmed to be poor!


Dementia has become a global public health concern, with one confirmed case of dementia every three seconds worldwide! Dementia is closely related to age (aging). According to statistics, about 3% of the world's population gets dementia between the ages of 65 and 74, another 19% between the ages of 75 and 84, and nearly half of the population gets dementia over the age of 85. WHO estimates that there will be more than 139 million people with dementia worldwide in 2050, with Alzheimer's disease accounting for more than half of the total.


We are all concerned about what are the more positive ways to help prevent or delay dementia besides proper exercise, healthy diet, and looking forward to medication. The following directions have been positively recognized in many international literatures.

[Blood sampling for Alzheimer's disease IMR AD test]


Prevention is the best cure!
Alzheimer's disease is more likely to occur at the age of 65 or older, but 15-25 years before the onset of the disease, the brain has already begun to change, with abnormal protein deposition. There is still no cure for dementia. The best way to deal with dementia at this stage is "early screening and early prevention". Only blood sampling is required for this procedure. Through IMR technology, the concentration of trace abnormal proteins in blood can be detected at the early stage when the accumulation of abnormal proteins is high, and active health management can be started to prevent the deterioration of dementia symptoms as much as possible.


[Clearing Zombie Cells with Immune Cells]


Recently, there are some medical treatments for dementia that are based on the specificity of the human immune system and the pathological changes in the brain of dementia patients, i.e., the treatment of dementia through the body's immune response.

The evidence for the formation of Alzheimer's disease is that the brain has amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles containing highly phosphorylated tau proteins, which induce inflammation of surrounding brain nerve cells, leading to the transformation into "zombie cells," causing nerve cell damage that affects brain function, leading to memory loss and cognitive decline.

In February 2016, the journal Nature published the latest results from American molecular biologists. Removal of aging "zombie cells" (senescence cells) can extend the life of animals by 20-30%, and immune cells are the main force in removing senescence cells. A recent article published in Aging 2022 also showed that NK cells have a better virulence rate against senescence cells, which demonstrates the immune control role of NK cells in the body to remove senescence cells from the body.

With age and disease, the cells in the body begin to age, and the number of immune cells decreases and their ability to clear them decreases, making it easy for "zombie cells" to escape the clearance of immune cells, resulting in a large accumulation of "zombie cells" in the body, which mutate and lose their function, causing organ damage and chronic diseases. Therefore, the use of "immune cells" to remove zombie cells is expected to improve many chronic diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, cataracts, diabetes, osteoporosis, heart enlargement, kidney problems, arterial blockage, and senile sarcopenia.


[Repairing Nerves with Exosomes]


Exosomes are small vesicles secreted outward by cells and play a role in intercellular communication. These small nano-vesicles, about 30-150 nm, carry hormone-like proteins or DNA, RNA, and miRNA containing genetic messages that transmit these instructions to other cells, regulating their behavior.


Exosomes contain a variety of bioactive substances that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and are highly stable, making them very promising in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Many studies have shown that exosomes secreted by mesenchymal stem cells can reach nerve cells, promote neural repair and neural stem cell (NSC) growth, inhibit apoptosis, protect nerve cells from free radical damage, and reduce the accumulation of β-amyloid, which helps restore memory and cognitive ability.


There are different sources of exosomes. In 2021, an article published in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine showed that human amniotic fluid stem cells secrete exosomal components that have the ability to protect nerve cells in addition to the normal exosomal capabilities. The analysis revealed that 16 highly expressed miRNAs in exosomes are involved in the activation of anti-apoptotic mechanism of message regulation, as well as slowing down the apoptosis of neuronal cells, thus reducing cognitive loss; therefore, it may also be useful for the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease.


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Reference:

[1] Enhanced co-culture and enrichment of human natural killer cells for the selective clearance of senescent cells. AGING 2022, Vol. 14, No. 5

[2] Role of immune cells in the removal of deleterious senescent cells. Immunity & Ageing (2020) 17:16

[3] Naturally occurring p16INK4a-positive cells shorten healthy lifespan. Nature volume 530, pages184–189 (2016)

[4] Destroying worn-out cells makes mice live longer. Nature (2016).

[5] Exosomes from mesenchymal stem/stromal cells: a new therapeutic paradigm. Biomark Res 7, 8 (2019).

[6] Neuroprotective effects of human amniotic fluid stem cells-derived secretome in an ischemia/reperfusion model. Stem Cells Translational Medicine, Volume 10, Issue 2, February 2021, Pages 251–266

[7] Exosome Determinants of Physiological Aging and Age-Related Neurodegenerative Diseases. Front. Aging Neurosci., 28 August 2019

[8] Mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosome: a promising alternative in the therapy of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer's Research & Therapy (2020) 12:109


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