The possibility of developing a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease targeting various neurotransmitters has opened up.
The research team led by Dr. Sejong Oh and Jaeyong Choi of the Korea Institute of Atomic Energy announced on the 8th that they have identified the overall change in neurotransmitters caused by Alzheimer’s disease using positron emission tomography (PET) in mice.
According to the research team, Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative brain disease that causes dementia, and there is no fundamental treatment yet. Recent studies have focused on neurotransmitters, which are signaling substances secreted from nerve cells as the cause of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms, such as memory disorders, behavioral disorders, and cognitive dysfunction, but most of them remain in the study of changes in single neurotransmitters.
However, research on various neurotransmitters is needed to determine what abnormalities Alzheimer’s disease exhibits in various neurotransmitters and which neurotransmitters are vulnerable.
Therefore, the research team injected a radiopharmaceutical that selectively binds to each brain neurotransmitter, such as glucose, glutamate, GABA, and dopami, to Alzheimer’s mice to check changes in various neurotransmitters when suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and performed PET images. Changes in radiopharmaceutical absorption were observed.
As a result of the experiment, in the case of glucose, the main energy source of the brain, both Alzheimer’s disease and normal mice showed similar brain absorption, but glutamate, which is involved in learning and memory formation, was 25-27% lower in Alzheimer’s disease mice than in normal mice. The inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA was found to be 14-35% higher in Alzheimer’s disease mice than in normal mice.
In addition, it was confirmed that dopamine related to behavior and cognition was 29% lower in Alzheimer’s disease mice than in normal mice.
The research team currently uses the glutamate series for the purpose of improving cognitive function, but this study confirmed the serious damage of GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter that regulates nerve excitability, and suggests the possibility of developing a therapeutic agent targeting it. did.
The research team said, “The number of dementia patients due to Alzheimer’s disease is increasing in the era of an aging population. will proceed,” he said.
This research was carried out with the support of the ‘Development of Leading Radiology Medicine for Overcoming Brain Diseases’ project supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Support Project for Senior Researchers of the National Research Foundation of Korea.
Meanwhile, the results of this study were published in the August online edition of ‘Frontiers in Neuroscience’, which contains the latest trends in neuroscience.