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Longtime St. Louis benefactor Joanne Knight has committed up to $11.5 million to Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to support an innovative clinical trial aimed at preventing Alzheimer’s disease by treating people before the first signs of the illness appear in the brain.
A brain protein may help explain the link between circadian rhythm and Alzheimer’s disease, researchers report.
Fractured sleep, daytime sleepiness, and other signs of disturbance in one’s circadian rhythm are common complaints of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and the problems only get worse as the disease progresses.
Researchers say that a clue may lie in the brain protein YKL-40.
The researchers report that clock genes regulate YKL-40 and it’s also involved in clearing away potentially toxic buildup of Alzheimer’s proteins in the brain. Moreover, Alzheimer’s patients who carry a genetic variant that reduces YKL-40 levels maintain their cognitive faculties longer than people without the variant, the scientists found.