At the University of New Mexico (UNM), Elaine Mearer is breaking new ground in understanding vascular dementia. The study has been published in the American Journal of Pathology and presents a new definition for cerebral vascular pathologies and cerebral blood flow functioning in relation to Alzheimer’s disease. Microplastics and nanoplastics have also been identified in patients, a fact that jeopardizes mental health and promotes vascular damage, and also highlights the importance of beta-amyloid proteins and their role in mental illness. Read on to learn more about this new finding.
What research must investigate
Vascular dementia is origined by blood flow problems in the brain: it’s one of the most usual categories of dementia, but not as well studied or understood as others. Related to this subject, the Neuropathologist Elaine Bearer from the University of New Mexico is trying to modify that.
In a recent review, she has proposed diferent categorizations for vascular dementia, each with single pathologies – the actual biological modifies in tissues and organs.
She underlines some important overlap with Alzheimer’s disease, and she explains that her team’s novel microscopy method sheds light on how microplastics that have seeped into the body might be triggering or exacerbating cases of vascular dementia.
“We have been flying blind,” says Bearer. “The various vascular pathologies have not been comprehensively defined, so we haven’t known what we’re treating.”
In additio, they didn’t know that nano- and microplastics were in the picture, due to the fact that they couldn’t see them.
Get to know Bearer’s microscope work
By studying both her own microscope work (which is published in a preprint) and papers by other researchers, Bearer has classified the outcome of chemical staining on the cerebral blood vessels of people who died with dementia.
Through that study, many different disease processes were recognized, all potentially contributing to vascular dementia. These took tino account the thickening of arteries and small quantities of bleeding, as well as tiny strokes that can harm neurons.
The categorization are intended to be used in incoming studies of dementia, to get to know how blood vessel damage may relate to disease. Every time we get to comprehend a condition more fully, that new information can aid in the development of treatments.
That also applies to Alzheimer. Some of the recognized pathologies in vascular dementia coincide with Alzheimer’s, such as the appereance of abnormal amyloid beta proteins. More investigation into the relationship among both diseases could give the final result about how diverse forms of dementia begings and progress.
Tiny plastic fragments, which are in all the environment, also seem to be at our brain. At the current time it’s not yet clear what the health impacts are, these pollutants are able to influence or be a product of damage or disease.
“Nanoplastics in the brain represent a new player on the field of brain pathology,” says Bearer. “All our current thinking about Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias needs to be revised in light of this discovery.”
More over, what she is finding is that there’s a lot more plastics in people with dementia than in normal subjects, and, also, It seems to relate with the degree and type of dementia.
How to approach to current forms of dementia
We’ve actually hasd information about vascular dementia since the late 19th century, but as other ways of the condition have been less problematic to identify, diagnose, and track, a lot of investigation has been directed elsewhere.
Now there’s a new framework through which to get close different representation of dementia. Dementia cases all have their specifications, and going deeper into those variations could teach us more about what makes some people more vulnerable to brain disease than others – and what can be done in response.
