Scientists Triggered Alzheimer's-Like Changes in Monkeys. A Year Later, They Showed No Obvious Memory Loss.
Researchers administered amyloid-beta protein clusters to African green monkeys to study Alzheimer's-like brain changes. Despite biological markers persisting for a year, the monkeys showed no signs of memory loss.
Why it matters
Understanding the gap between biological markers and cognitive decline is crucial for developing early interventions for Alzheimer's disease in humans.
Can monkeys get Alzheimer's , or is the disease unique to humans?
As African green monkeys age, their brains can develop some changes that resemble those seen in Alzheimer's.
That doesn't mean they develop the full disease seen in people. But it raises a question: Could these monkeys help researchers see what happens before memory begins to fail?
In a new study published in Communications Biology , green monkeys kept performing well on a memory test after being administered small clusters of a protein linked to Alzheimer's. Yet one year later, signs of a biological response remained in the fluid surrounding their brains.
"What surprised me most was the persistence of the molecular response," co-first author Bianca Brown, a biochemist at Yale University, told ScienceAlert.
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