Text/Jianping
Professor Ye Keqiang’s team from the School of Life and Health, Shenzhen University of Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (under preparation) recently published an article in the journal “Nature”, revealing for the first time that the increase in follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is a higher proportion of women than women. An important reason why men are more prone to Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
At present, more than 50 million patients have been diagnosed worldwide, and with the arrival of an aging society, this number is expected to increase significantly to 152 million in 2050. There are even statistics showing that about 1 person in the world is diagnosed with AD every 3 seconds.
And epidemiological surveys show that the number of women with Alzheimer’s disease is twice as high as that of men. Previously, people had not been clear about the cause of this phenomenon, but now Professor Ye Keqiang’s research has clearly answered the mystery that has plagued mankind for many years.
The pathological phenomenon of AD is extremely complex.
The results of brain tissue examination showed that AD patients generally have senile plaques formed by a large number of β-amyloid deposits outside the brain nerve cells, intracellular neurofibrillary tangles formed by abnormal phosphorylation of Tau protein, and neuron loss. , neurotrophic dystrophy, synaptic loss and other pathological phenomena, but the related pathogenesis is still unclear.
Professor Ye’s team has been committed to the research on the pathogenesis, early diagnosis and drug development of neurodegenerative diseases for many years. Based on the systematic summary of the team’s hundreds of cutting-edge academic papers, they put forward original theories: Activation of the C/EBPβ/AEP neural signaling pathway is a core driver of neurodegenerative diseases.
Based on this theory, Prof. Ye’s team studied hormones whose concentrations vary sharply in women before and after menopause, and tested which hormones can selectively activate the C/EBPβ/AEP pathway.
Finally, they discovered the important pathogenic factor of increased follicle-stimulating hormone – the level of follicle-stimulating hormone in menopausal women will increase sharply to more than 10 times, and the corresponding level in older men. Probably only about 3 times higher.
A sharp increase in follicle-stimulating hormone binds to receptors on the surface of neurons in the brain, activating these pathways in the brain, leading to Alzheimer’s disease.
Follicular stimulating hormone is a hormone in women’s body, this hormone can promote the growth of follicles, if the secretion of this hormone in the body is too high, it will affect the normal fertility of women, its production is also affected by the ovary. Inverse regulation of estrogen.
The researchers said that during women’s menstruation, estrogen increases, and brain regulation will inhibit the increase of follicle-stimulating hormone. After menopause, estrogen decreases, and follicle-stimulating hormone is no longer suppressed, so it is easier cause Alzheimer’s disease in women.
Figure/Visual China
But at present, there is still no more ideal way to reduce Alzheimer’s disease disease risk.
The traditional methods of clinical intervention in Alzheimer’s disease include drug intervention, gene intervention, rehabilitation training, etc., but they can only improve the symptoms, but cannot prevent the development of the disease.
Professor Ye’s research may provide a new research direction for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. The next step of the research team is to conduct in-depth research on the mechanism level of the relationship between specific risk genes and follicle-stimulating hormone.