Sleep Loss Encourages Spread of Alzheimers Protein
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In 2013, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (partially) answered a question that’s plagued mankind for centuries, “Why do we need sleep?”. Their tests showed that while asleep, the brains of mice are cleansed of Alzheimer associated plaques, (namely Amyloid-β & Tau). The study suggests that lack of sleep could have a causal role in the development of tauopathic diseases such as Alzheimers, by allowing these byproducts to build up and cause brain damage. However as their tests were performed in mice, the question remained whether this cleansing occurred in all species and to what extent?
Flash forward to 2019 and researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have determined that sleep deprivation in humans can also lead to the spread and aggregation of this Alzheimer inducing protein. These new findings suggest that Alzheimer’s disease and sleep loss are even more intimately intertwined than previously thought. Therefore, optimization of the sleep-wake cycle should be an important treatment target to test in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies. Hopefully, knowledge of this critical brain process will lead to further research on how the process works and the role it plays in neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
And while it still isn’t clear whether a good night’s sleep can prevent Alzheimers, this study further underscores the importance of sleep and the potential damaging effect that the loss of it can have on us.