Wayne
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Article -- How the Brain Cleans Itself
Given how CFS has so disrupted my cognitive function, and is probably the most difficult "symptom" I deal with, I've long wondered what could be the cause of this dysfunction. It's not only common in ME/CFS, but in any number of other disease situations, such as Multiple Sclerosis, Lyme, etc. So I found the above article quite interesting, which seems to indicate (to me) it's possible a gene expression critical to allowing the brain to cleanse itself may get disabled as a result of various infections going on in the body. I found the following especially interesting:
Given how CFS has so disrupted my cognitive function, and is probably the most difficult "symptom" I deal with, I've long wondered what could be the cause of this dysfunction. It's not only common in ME/CFS, but in any number of other disease situations, such as Multiple Sclerosis, Lyme, etc. So I found the above article quite interesting, which seems to indicate (to me) it's possible a gene expression critical to allowing the brain to cleanse itself may get disabled as a result of various infections going on in the body. I found the following especially interesting:
As a test of their work, the researchers injected proteins called amyloid beta into mice's brains. In Alzheimer's, this protein—present in all healthy brains—can accumulate and clump, developing into cell-damaging plaque. The researchers compared mice with a normal glymphatic system to those with a disabled gene that prevented glial cells from assisting in the fluid flow. They found that in the normal mice, the protein rapidly cleared from the brain along these channels, but amyloid removal diminished in the gene-altered animals. --- Iliff hypothesizes that a faulty glymphatic system may bear the blame for the over-accumulation of proteins seen in Alzheimer's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's and other neurodegenerative disorders—and further study may even reveal a way to dispose of these clumps.