A brain trauma?Alzheimer’s disease connection

Two enzymes implicated in Alzheimer’s disease may also have a role in traumatic brain injury, according to research online this week in Nature Medicine.

Amyloid-beta peptides, pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, accumulate rapidly after traumatic brain injury in humans. Mark Burns and his colleagues now show that blocking either beta- or gamma-secretase, enzymes required for production of Amyloid-beta, can reduce deficits in movement and behavior and reduce neuronal loss after experimentally inflicted brain injury in mice.

The authors propose that these two secretases, which are being actively pursued in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, could also be promising targets to treat traumatic brain injury.