Alzheimer's Disease Reclassified as an Autoimmune Condition: The Role of Amyloid Plaques in the Debate
Not long ago, some Canadian scientists clearly put forward a different explanation for the cause of Alzheimer’s disease—they suggested that Alzheimer’s may be an autoimmune disease . Alzheimer’s May Be an Autoimmune Disease According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), there are about 50 million dementia patients in the world, with 10 million new cases every year; it means that about one person is diagnosed every three seconds. Over the years, the “amyloid hypothesis” has been widely accepted among various theories of the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, but it has also been controversial as some phenomena in patients with Alzheimer’s do not fit the hypothesis. For example, people with amyloid plaques in their brains may not have Alzheimer’s. Besides, there are still many uncertainties about the clinical benefit of drugs targeting the elimination of amyloid beta. Recently, Canadian scientists published a post sa...