Antidepressant May Help Prevent Alzheimer’s
According to new research, an antidepressant may help to clear away the protein plaque that builds up in Alzheimer’s patients brains, and help slow or even prevent the disease.
The antidepressant drug, citalopram, sold as Celexa, was given to older mice with Alzheimer’s-like brain damage. The scientists found that though the existing plaques didn’t go away, the number of new plaques had reduced. Researchers then gave a single dose of citalopram to healthy young adults and found that their production of the amyloid protein that causes the plaques dropped by 37 percent.
More research is needed to see if this would translate into any beneficial effect on slowing Alzheimer’s disease or if it can protect people from the disease. Scientists believe that amyloid plaques start the disease but another abnormal protein, tau, makes it severe. More….
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