Nature sub-journal: "Exchange blood method" is feasible to treat Alzheimer's disease!

Previous studies have shown that the misfolding, aggregation and brain deposition of β-amyloid are the main factors that induce AD.

Recently, a study titled "Preventive and therapeutic reduction of amyloid deposition and behavioral impairments in a model of Alzheimer's disease by whole blood exchange" published in Molecular Psychiatry, a sub-journal of Nature, showed that by exchanging whole blood with healthy mice, The formation of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice with AD was significantly reduced by 40-80%, suggesting that exchange transfusion therapy may be effective in treating Alzheimer's disease

Figure 1 Research results (source: [1])

The researchers attempted to study the effect of exchange transfusion therapy on reducing Alzheimer's disease pathology under the assumption that the peripheral circulation affects brain pathological abnormalities

Note: "whole blood" is not the whole blood of the mouse, but refers to the blood without any components removed

During the procedure, the research team manually drew 300 μL of total blood from the jugular vein, mainly through a 30-gauge needle heparin-coated syringe, and then slowly injected (100 μL/min) into the jugular vein of Tg2576 mice to compensate for the volume drawn

1.

In the experiment, after multiple blood transfusions to mice carrying the Alzheimer's disease gene, it was found that the amyloid plaques formed in the brains of the mice were reduced by 40%-80%; Cross-sectional view, the researchers found that only very few and very small amyloid plaques were observed in the brains of aged Tg2576 mice after exchange transfusion; in contrast, the cerebral cortex and hippocampus of aged mice in the control group In vivo, a large number of brain amyloid plaques appeared (Figure 2)

Figure 2 Blood exchange therapy reduces the accumulation of brain amyloid plaques (Source: [1])

Specifically, the number and coverage of amyloid plaques were significantly reduced in the brains of aged mice that received whole blood therapy: compared with controls, the cerebral cortex and hippocampus of exchange transfusion mice had more amyloid plaques.

2.

To investigate whether blood exchange leads to functional changes in spatial memory, mice were subjected to a 1-hour Barnes maze test at 12.

Figure 3.

The results showed that aged mice with pathological amyloid plaques had significantly improved spatial memory after undergoing blood transfusion