Alzheimer’s Hypothesis Earns Support

Once refused funding for research on the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, Sue Griffin ’74M (PhD) and her colleagues at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue their research.

Griffin’s unusual hypothesis initially caused doubts in the medical community. It was commonly believed that amyloid plaques cause the disease by damaging the brain’s neurons, but Griffin hypothesized that the damage doesn’t start with the amyloid plaques.

Instead, she says, Alzheimer’s is caused by an abnormal immune response, of which the plaques are a part: The existence of the plaques is caused by an excess of cytokines, including interleukin-1, and the plaques trigger even more cytokines to be released, causing more and more damage to the brain. Griffin calls this the “cytokine cycle.”

In her research, Griffin is focusing on the possibility of catching the disease early enough to treat it with anti-inflammatory drugs to prevent further deterioration.

“Our idea is to detect the disease as early as possible and then intervene with drug therapies or alternative treatments before it reaches its very degenerative stages,” Griffin explains, “so we can keep people functionally independent.”

Griffin and the UAMS researchers will work to determine whether drugs may slow the disease’s progression.