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closeHypothesis: Endogenous formaldehyde as one of the most important risk factors involving sporadic Alzheimer's disease
Posted by herongqiao on 05 Dec 2009 at 09:54 GMT
Hypothesis: Endogenous formaldehyde as one of the most important risk factors involving sporadic Alzheimer’s disease.
Some observations
(1) Human cells produce and degrade formaldehyde at each moment.
(2) The level of human endogenous formaldehyde is kept at low concentration under physiological condition, and that is getting higher during aging.
(3) The endogenous formaldehyde level higher than that under physiological condition induces misfolding of neural protein such as Tau protein, which becomes cytotoxic after misfolded.
(4) Abnormal high level of formaldehyde leads to dysfunction of the central nerve system including dysfunction of cognition.
(5) …
The significance
(1) According to this hypothesis, endogenous formaldehyde can be used as a biomarker to support clinical diagnosis and investigation of Alzheimer’s disease especially at early stage of the senor dementia. The level of urine formaldehyde is recommended as a candidate.
(2) According to this hypothesis, to decrease endogenous formaldehyde may be as one of the targets for the study of a drug to treat Alzheimer’s patients.
References
1. Zhiqian Tong, Jinling Zhang, Wenhong Luo, Hui Li, Hongjun Luo, Weishan Wang, Jing Lu, Jiangning Zhou, You Wan, Rongqiao He (2009) Urine formaldehyde level is inversely correlated to mini mental state examination scores in senile dementia Neurobiology of Aging, Online.
2. Chun Lai Nie, Xing Sheng Wang, Ying Liu, Sarah Perrett and Rong Qiao He (2007) Amyloid-like aggregates of neuronal tau are induced by formaldehyde exposure and promote apoptosis of neuronal cells BMC Neuroscience 8:9.
Note: This is a brief communication of the hypothesis.
Rong Qiao He
State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.