A new link found between CJD and Alzheimer’s

The evidence of a link between Alzheimer’s and CJD is definitely beginning to stack up.  I find it interesting because my mother’s mother has Alzheimer’s disease.  When my mother was still alive, she was fascinated with AD and felt strongly that it had to do with amyloid plaques on the brain.  She also thought it had to do with her mother’s fatty Polish diet… I’m not sure if that’s true, but that was her theory.  My mother died of CJD, which she inherited from her father’s side of the family.  I’m not sure what this means for me in the long-term, as both of my biological grandmothers suffered from a neurodegenerative disease.

Read the whole article from Washington University in St. Louis.  The new research is promising and helping to connect the dots.  Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“This interplay between amyloid and the prion protein raises questions about whether these diseases are really all that different, and whether there are common pathways involved in both conditions that can provide an avenue for new treatments,” says lead author Nupur Ghoshal, M.D., Ph.D., an investigator at Washington University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC).