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Evidence for Person-to-Person Transmission of Alzheimer's Pathology
Study raises question about whether proteins implicated in the disease are capable of spreading through medical procedures
By Diana Kwon | September 9, 2015
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Prions are the misshapen proteins that replicate by inducing normal proteins to misfold and aggregate in the brain, leading to rare diseases such as mad cow and kuru. In recent years, scientists have discovered that similar processes of protein misfoldingare at work in many neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease. Now, a study in Nature reveals the first evidence for human-to-human transmission of the misfolded proteins that underlie the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease...