Protective Brain Molecule Could Fight Alzheimer's Disease and Save Cognitive Function

The cause for Alzheimer's disease is still unknown, but researchers have been looking for ways to maintain a healthy brain to prevent the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. from affecting one of the body's most vital organs.

Neurologists, scientists, and other medical experts assert that maintaining a young and healthy brain is paramount for preventing the onset of Alzheimer's later in life. And now, through experiments with mice, researchers at the Harvard Medical School may have found a protective brain molecule that could prevent the most common form of dementia.

The researchers discovered that the protein "repressor element 1-silencing transcription factor (REST), which is produced during brain development, turns off genes involved in cell death and resistance to cellular toxins and is missing in the brains of people who have Alzheimer's disease or other cognitive impairments.

"REST induces the expression of stress response genes and potently protects neurons from oxidative stress and amyloid β-protein toxicity," the researchers wrote in the study's abstract.

To support these statements, the researchers examined postmortem brains of people who had taken tests of cognitive function to measure levels of the REST protein. They found that those with superior cognitive function possessed three times more of REST in their brains. So they took their findings to the laboratory to analyze the role of REST in living animals.

Living mice who lacked the REST gene were found to be "more vulnerable to aging stress and lost a significant number of neurons in the forebrain cortex, one of the primary brain areas affected by dementia," Tanya Lewis writes in this Live Science article. The researchers restored the REST protein to the brains of mice that were lacking it and found that it protected them from further experiencing cognitive decline.

The researchers' further studies will focus on the REST protein and whether or not it can be used as a diagnostic of brain health. To read more about the REST protein and Alzheimer's, visit this Fox News article.