August 23, 2013

Iron and Age, a Combo for Alzheimer's?

From medpagetoday.com

Iron and Age, a Combo for Alzheimer's?
Published: Aug 22, 2013

By Chris Kaiser, Cardiology Editor, MedPage Today
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Iron helps repair myelin damage in the brain, but accumulation of the element with aging may bring on iron toxicity, particularly in the hippocampus, a region affected early in Alzheimer's disease, researchers suggested.

MR imaging showed that Alzheimer's patients had increased levels of ferritin iron and tissue damage in the hippocampus, but not in the thalamus, a region affected only later in the disease, according to George Bartzokis, MD, of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and colleagues.

In addition, higher levels of iron in the hippocampus were associated with worse tissue integrity, they reported in the August issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Although iron is critical for cell function, too much can lead to oxidative damage. Levels of iron in the brain increase with age and are "abnormally elevated in gray matter structures in age-related degenerative diseases," researchers noted.

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