A lost night of sleep can have unforeseen effects as you get older. A study conducted by Jonathan Cedernaes, senior researcher of«Uppsala University» in Sweden, published in the magazine «Neurology», has highlighted how losing a night of sleep leads to a 17% increase in the tau protein present in the blood, the most likely marker of the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
«In the meantime though, new research paves the way towards a vaccine against this disease e the decade that has just begun could thus mark the turning point. We need to find more funds to finance research and we Rotarians can take charge of this, just as we did for polio» comments Renato Boccia, spokesman and co-head of the Alzheimer's Project of the Rotary Club Rome Capital.
Despite the difficulties in research on this complex disease, glimmers are opening. By combining two vaccines, the results obtained in mice by a team composed of researchers from the Institute of Molecular Medicine and the University of California, Irvine are promising and have already been published in «Alzheimer's Research & Therapy», expecting to reach human trials within 2 years.
For this reason, the Rotary Club Roma Capitale is proposing to concentrate its efforts in the fight against Alzheimer's, after the positive results obtained in the global fight against polio, now eradicated also thanks to the 2 billion dollars of funding received from Rotarians from all over the world for the vaccination campaign (2,5 billion children in 122 countries).
The aim of the initiative, which will be presented on Friday 24th during a conference in the Senate, is to succeed in also defeat Alzheimer's. Italian scholars are making a fundamental contribution to research that sees researchers at the forefront of the EBRI Foundation (European Brain Research Institute) “Rita Levi-Montalcini”.
In practice, the Italian researchers found out a molecule that "rejuvenates" the brain by blocking Alzheimer's in the first phase: is theantibody A13 which favors the birth of new neurons and thus counteracts the defects that accompany the early stages of the disease.
The study coordinated by Antonino Cattaneo and Giovanni Meli e Raffaella Scardigli, at the EBRI Foundation in collaboration with the CNR, the Scuola Normale Superiore and the Department of Biology of the University of Roma Tre, was recently published in the journal «Cell Death and Differentiation».
All of this will be discussed during the conference "Healthy ageing: which paths?" organized by Rotary Rome on Friday 24 January 2020, from 14,30 to 19.00 pm, in the Sala Zuccari of the Senate.
In Italy, full-blown Alzheimer's patients there are 1,2 million, but it is estimated that over 700 people are already ill and still don't know they are. In the world, on the other hand, there are as many as 49 million patients, with a 10-year projection of a new patient every three seconds. «Figures that must make us think and that must be taken seriously into consideration» concludes the president of Rotary Rome, Pier Luigi Di Giorgio.
