Alzheimer’s Disease prevention may be as simple as flashing light therapy. To date, use of drug therapy to prevent this disease is unsuccessful. MIT is offering a novel solution with promising results.
Is it Possible to Divert Alzheimer’s with Flashing Light Therapy?
The Massachusetts team found shining a strobe light into rodents’ eyes encouraged protective cells to gobble up the harmful proteins that accumulate in the brain in this type of dementia.
The perfect rate of flashes was 40 per second – a barely perceptible flicker, four times as fast as a disco strobe.
The researchers say the approach should be tested in humans.
They are already seeking permission from the US regulator, the Food and Drugs Administration, and have set up a commercial company to develop the technology.
Build-up of beta amyloid protein is one of the earliest changes seen in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease.
It clumps together to form sticky plaques and is thought to cause nerve cell death and memory loss.
Researchers have been looking for ways to prevent plaque formation using drugs, but the results have been disappointing.
But Dr Li-Huei Tsai and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think they have found another way, using light.
The mice that they studied were genetically engineered to have Alzheimer’s-type damage in their brain, Nature journal reports.
When the mice were put in front of the flashing light for an hour, it led to a noticeable reduction in beta amyloid over the next 12 to 24 hours in the parts of the brain that handle vision. read more at bbc.com
Inhibition of the beta amyloid protein plaques in the brain may be the best Alzheimer’s prevention idea, yet. This is one FDA study worth following.