"Discovering that amyloid begins to accumulate so early in life is unprecedented," said lead investigator Changiz Geula, research professor at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "This is very significant. We know that amyloid, when present for long periods of time, is bad for you." "This points to why these neurons die early," Geula said. "The small clumps of amyloid may be a key reason. The lifelong accumulation of amyloid in these neurons likely contributes to the vulnerability of these cells to pathology in aging and loss in Alzheimer's." "It's also possible that the clumps get so large, the degradation machinery in the cell can't get rid of them, and they clog it up," Geula said.
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