Here’s a rare way that an Alzheimer’s protein can spread

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Here’s a rare way that an Alzheimer’s protein can spread

When injected, amyloid-beta from vials of growth hormone built up in mice brains当注射时，小瓶生长激素中的淀粉样蛋白在小鼠大脑中形成

BY LAURA SANDERS 11:00AM, DECEMBER 13, 2018

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BRAIN BUILDUP  Amyloid-beta (illustrated in brown) from vials of contaminated growth hormone spread in the brains of mice, researchers found.研究人员发现，小瓶受污染的生长激素在老鼠大脑中扩散，从而产生淀粉样蛋白(图中用棕色表示)。

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An Alzheimer’s protein found in contaminated vials of human growth hormone can spread in the brains of mice. 在被污染的人类生长激素小瓶中发现的一种阿尔茨海默氏症蛋白质可以在老鼠的大脑中传播。That finding, published online December 13 in Nature, adds heft to the idea that, in very rare cases, amyloid-beta can travel from one person’s brain to another’s.

Decades ago, over a thousand young people in the United Kingdom received injections of growth hormone derived from cadavers’ brains as treatment for growth deficiencies. 几十年前，英国有一千多名年轻人接受了来自尸体大脑的生长激素注射，以治疗生长缺陷。Four of these people died with unusually high levels of A-beta in their brains, a sign of Alzheimer’s disease (SN: 10/17/15, p. 12). The results hinted that A-beta may have been delivered along with the growth hormone.结果提示a -可能与生长激素一起被释放。

Now researchers have confirmed not only that A-beta was in some of those old vials, but also that it can spark A-beta accumulation in mice’s brains. Neurologist John Collinge of University College London and colleagues found that brain injections of the contaminated growth hormone led to clumps of A-beta in the brains of mice genetically engineered to produce the protein, while brain injections with synthetic growth hormone did not.伦敦大学学院(University College London)的神经学家约翰?科林奇(John Collinge)及其同事发现，注射受污染的生长激素，会在经过基因改造、产生这种蛋白质的老鼠大脑中形成A-beta团，而注射合成生长激素的老鼠则不会。

Plaque progression

Amyloid-beta (brown) accumulated inside brain blood vessels (No. 1) and formed plaques in the cerebellum (No. 2) in the brains of mice injected with growth hormone that came from cadavers.

S.A. PURRO ET AL/NATURE 2018

The results suggest that A-beta can “seed” the protein in people’s brains, under the right circumstances. Still, that doesn’t mean that Alzheimer’s disease is transmissible in day-to-day life.不过，这并不意味着阿尔茨海默氏症会在日常生活中传播。

“There is no evidence that Alzheimer’s disease is contagious,” says neurologist and neuroscientist David Holtzman of Washington University in St. Louis, who cowrote an accompanying editorial in Nature. The four people who showed signs of A-beta accumulation “were injected repeatedly either in the muscle or intravenously with material that came from human brains,” he says.他说，有A-beta积累迹象的四个人“被反复地注射肌肉或静脉注射来自人类大脑的物质”。 “This is not a practice done anymore.”

Citations

‌S.A. Purro et al. Transmission of amyloid-ß protein pathology from cadaveric pituitary growth hormone. Nature. Published online December 13, 2018. doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0790-y.

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