Part of the failure to find treatments for Alzheimer’s disease may, paradoxically, be the amount of money involved. The only intervention known to make a difference – exercise – is largely ignored but then that â€্rug” is available for free! Also, scientists who have built their careers on promoting a particular hypothesis and have convinced drug companies to invest many millions of dollars based on that are unlikely to do an about face and declare they have changed their mind. There is accumulating evidence that hypoxia may be a coordinating factor for many of the phenomena seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Hypoxia markers are the best in serum for indicating progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease, hypoxia causes oxidative stress and cell cycle events, hypoxia up-regulates the genes involved in Abeta production and is consistent with the similarity of cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s disease risk factors etc. It may be that Abeta accumulation is more a marker of the pathology than a causative agent, or it may sit downstream in the pathological pathway.
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