IIT Guwahati develops way to combat Alzheimer’s
Researchers at IIT Guwahati claim to have developed new ways to prevent or reduce the memory that is short-lived due to Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers have claimed that their research has found a different way to avoid Alzheimer’s disease.
The four-member team studied the neurochemical theory of Alzheimer’s to find ways to prevent the neurotoxic molecule from accumulating in the brain. The neurotoxic molecule is associated with reduced memory loss due to Alzheimer’s.
The study has been published in prestigious international journals including ACS Chemical Neuroscience, the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal RSC Advances, BBA and Neuropeptides.
Professor Vipin Ramakrishnan of the Institute’s Department of Biology said that treatment of Alzheimer’s disease is important, especially for India, which has the highest number of Alzheimer’s patients after China and the US. More than 40 lakh people face loss of memory due to this disease. The current treatment of the disease only slows down some symptoms. There is not yet a medical approach that can treat the underlying cause of Alzheimer’s.
He said that nearly a hundred potential drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease had failed between 1998 and 2011, showing the severity of the problem. We have worked on some interesting methods such as the use of low-voltage electric fields and Trojan peptides to inhibit neurotoxic molecules in the brain.
According to Professor Harshal Nemade of the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, the team found that the use of low-voltage and safe electrical fields can prevent the formation and accumulation of toxic neurodegenerative molecules that cause short-term memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease.
