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Chemists at the Technische Universität Darmstadt have developed a new method for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. The method involves making protein deposits on mucous nasal membranes that are detectable years before the disease erupts
visible.
Chemists at the TU Darmstadt and pathologists at Darmstadt City Hospital have found that deposits of the tau protein that causes mortification of affected brain cells in Alzheimer’s sufferers are detectable on mucous nasal membranes, even before dementia
commences.
Prof. Boris Schmidt of the Clemens Schöpf Institute for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the TU Darmstadt explained that, “All that was known to date was that the harmful deposits were evident in both brain cells and ocular nerve cells. Diagnoses via retinal scans, where fluorescent dies were supposed to make the offending ocular deposits visible to the examining ophthalmologist, were therefore the preferred method.”
In the course of research work on such dies, the TU Darmstadt chemists and pathologist Roland Heyny-von Haußen discovered that they also made deposits on mucous nasal membranes visible.
As Prof. Schmidt put it, “We found the typical deposits on nasal Bowman glands, which, among other things, produce nasal secretions.”
Accurate diagnoses of the stage of the disease can now be
made.
Since the attendant changes in mucous nasal membranes are very closely correlated to the offending brain deposits, investigations of the mucous nasal membranes have thus far allowed making more accurate diagnoses of the stage of the disease than retinal scans. Prof. Schmidt went on to say that, “The more nasal tau-protein deposits we found in patients, the worse were their brain structures infested – to date, such a correlation has never been reliably established in the case of ocular
deposits.”
The Darmstadt group regards the lessened effects on patients as another benefit of the nasal investigations. Prof. Schmidt envisions one possible physical examination as involving administering the fluorescent die involved in tablet or nasal-spray form. The examination could then be conducted using an illuminating
endoscope.
In conjunction with a clinical study, the Darmstadt group initially investigated the mucous nasal membranes of 100 deceased Alzheimer’s patients in order to determine the earliest stage, at which Alzheimer’s disease could be diagnosed. In parallel therewith, the associated endoscopic diagnostics were investigated in trials conducted on Alzheimer’s patients at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, incurable, brain disorder whose cause is unknown. Included among its symptoms are memory loss, bewilderment, and disorientation, along with changes in personality traits, deteriorated judgment, and loss of linguistic ability. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of irreversible dementia. In Germany, an estimated 1.2 million persons currently suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. By 2030, that number is expected to increase to 2.3 million, and reach 42 million, worldwide. Since Alzheimer’s disease remains incurable, the sole hope at present is that therapies that will delay, or halt, its progress will emerge in the near future. However, their effective employment will be contingent upon diagnoses at the earliest-possible stage.
Source
Technische Universität Darmstadt
(MDN)
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