- High cholesterol causes cells to divide incorrectly, causing them to have wrong number of chromosomes
- This, in turn, may encourage the development of damaging plaques in the brain, say researchers
By
Anna Hodgekiss
06:03 EST, 16 April 2013
|
06:09 EST, 16 April 2013
People with raised cholesterol don’t just have an increased risk of heart disease – they may be more likely to develop dementia.
Researchers have found that high cholesterol levels are significantly related to brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s
disease.
And now, American scientists say they have found the reason why high cholesterol can damage the brain and blood vessels.
High cholesterol is significantly related to brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease
Using insights gained from studying
two much rarer disorders, Down Syndrome and Niemann Pick-C disease, researchers found that cholesterol wreaks havoc on the orderly process of cell
division.
That’s because cholesterol,
particularly in the ‘bad’ LDL form, causes cells in both humans and
mice to divide incorrectly and
distribute their already-duplicated chromosomes unequally to the next
generation.
The result is an accumulation of defective cells with the wrong number of chromosomes – and therefore the wrong number of
genes.
Instead of the correct two copies of each chromosome, and therefore two copies of each gene, some cells acquired three copies and some only
on, the researchers at the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome and University of Colorado found.
They also found that cells carrying three copies of the chromosome were associated with the damaging protein amyloid, which occurs between nerve cells – and people with Alzheimer’s have amyloid plaques in their brains.
High cholesterol results in defective cells with the wrong number of chromosomes – and this in turn may encourage the development of damaging plaques in the brain, say researchers
The study is published in the online journal PLOS ONE.
Previous research has found that people with high cholesterol levels, defined by a reading of more than
5.8 mmol/L, had significantly more brain plaques when compared to those
with normal or lower cholesterol levels.
A total of 86 percent of people
with high cholesterol had brain plaques, compared with only 62 percent
of people with low cholesterol levels, the researchers from Japan’s Kyushu University found.
Using autopsies, they looked for plaques and tangles in the brain, both known to
be trademark signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Plaques are an accumulation
of a form of the protein amyloid, which occurs between nerve cells.
Tangles are an accumulation of a different protein, called tau, which
occurs inside nerve cells.
While the study found no link between high cholesterol and the tangles that develop in the brain with Alzheimer’s disease, there was a definite link with plaques.Â
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