How Alzheimer's is able to Spread in the brain

The last few weeks of class we have been learning about the nervous system as well as some of the conditions that go along with the nervous system as it goes through the aging process. One of the conditions that occurs is that of Alzheimer's disease. This disease is very interesting and is still having studies done it to see how it spreads through the brain, as well as causes, and possible treatments. One of the interesting articles that I came across was about how Alzheimer's spreads through the brain like a virus. The study that was performed was done on mice, and what the study showed was instead of the infection spreading like a bacteria would spread, it spread because of the break down of the tau proteins. This is interesting because these are also the proteins that are affected in Parkinson's. This study showed that they could put a halt in the disease if they were able to put a stop in cell to cell transmission and stop tau. If they were able to stop or at least slow this down they would be able to slow the cell death and how it moves across the brain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/health/research/alzheimers-spreads-like-a-virus-in-the-brain-studies-find.html?_r=1