Pin1 Is Beneficial in Alzheimer's Disease, Detrimental to Some Forms of Dementia

This is a good example of the need to go beyond your family doctor and get a specialist to diagnose specific types of dementia. I am still amazed at how many people I meet that simply accept the family doctor diagnosis and prescribed treatment. It is not widely known you need to "ask" for the consult as many health care companies don't want to pay for this extra level of "service" and discourage family care doctors from recommending the "consult".

Pin1 Is Beneficial in Alzheimer's Disease, Detrimental to Some Forms of Dementia.

clipped from www.newswise.com The most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and a relatively rare hereditary form of dementia, frontotemporal dementia with parkinsonism-17, share a common pathology: Both are the result of an overaccumulation of tau proteins, which form tangled lesions in the brain’s neurons and eventually lead to the collapse of the brain cells responsible for memory although mutations in the gene encoding tau have not been found in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, they have been identified in individual with frontotemporal dementia, and are often used as models for studying Alzheimer’s disease A new study finds that the Pin1 enzyme, previously shown to be of benefit in “detangling” tau in Alzheimer’s disease, actually has the contradictory effect in cases in which the tau has certain mutations while increasing Pin1 in neurons effectively suppresses the disease development in cases of Alzheimer’s, it actually accelerates disease progression in the case of frontotemporal dementia