Rise of the Planet of the Apes was one of the greatest movies that was released this year. One focus of the movie was an issue that has left the scientific world puzzled. With all the major research that has been done, there is no known cause or cure for Alzheimer’s disease. While both articles agree that this disease is affecting the world negatively, in the Journal Nature the article Alzheimer’s disease discusses the crippling disease that many are facing as a result of old age and the second article Brain Plaques Do Not Cause Alzheimer’s, focuses more on the actual scientific research and how they may need to start looking into other causes for the illness.
The first article explains how at one point, when you think of Alzheimer’s you may just think of someone who is old and that is simply forgetting everyday task, which is definitely not the case. The article describes this disease as a fog. The disease and the effects are both mysteries to the world. Is this disease predetermined? Is it based on your genes? These are frightening questions that can scare many, especially if their family went through the disease and they saw the tragic downfall.Being that scientist cannot even understand the disease there is no possibility that they will find the correct cure. This disease not only affects the individuals and their families but also the economy. One figure showed that in the United States alone costs were up to 300 billion dollars a year. The amount is only going to increase with more cases. It gives a little hope that certain activities such as dancing and playing games can help.
There is a debate on whether plaques and tangles that the brain forms cause this disease. Plaques are deposits of beta-amyloid that gather in the spaces between nerve cells, and tangles are deposits that accumulate inside the nerve cells. The article Brain Plaques Do not cause Alzheimer’s, says that plaques on the brain do not cause this detrimental disease. One reason that the author feels this way is because the body produces these proteins to protect the brain. The human body is magnificent and it would not produce something that would harm itself. This is the debate. Whether plaques are harmful and toxic to the brain or if they are protective and tools created by the brain. One cause that scientist are now leaning towards are oligomers. An experiment was tested on the plaques theory on mice. One group had oligomers and plaques present and the other group just had oligomers. The results were that there was no major difference between the test groups. If plaques were the cause of the disease, then the drugs that they produced would have resulted with better results. This article feels that the scientific world needs to take on a new approach to this disease and explore possibilities that they may have ignored in the past.
There is definitely a consensus that whatever the cause or cure may be, that there is a sure need for this enigma to be solved. In both articles, you feel a sense that unfortunately there may never be a cure. The brain is complex and there is a great capacity that the world does not understand. Whether plaques are the cause of this detrimental disease, from these articles we see that Alzheimer’s disease is very serious and hurting the economy and the lives of those with the disease and the people around them. Hopefully when the cure is found, it does not result in apes taking over the world.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7355_supp/full/475S1a.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/029921_brain_plaque_Alzheimers.html
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