Alzheimer's disease, although billions of euros are spent on it today, its mechanism of development is unclear to medical science. Therefore, there is no medicine in the doctor's hands that could eliminate, what's more, prevent this type of disease, which is only noticeable at first as pathological forgetfulness. Dementia in old age is already a symptom of the progress of the insidious Alzheimer's disease, when the doctor can diagnose the severe deterioration of the patient's mental capacity, but cannot cure or slow it down. Even in a mild or moderately severe condition, the patient is unable to manage his normal daily life on his own, then (s)he constantly needs a helper, which places difficult burdens on the family.
It is an accepted view that - like Parkinson's disease - it can now be traced back to protein structural defects (amyloid-beta (Aβ), tau, etc.) that can be delimited by some molecular testing methods. So it is called plaque disease.
Alzheimer's disease is the newest widespread disease of our time, affecting the aging population of affluent societies. While life expectancy generally increases, the symptoms associated with protein plaque formation worsen the quality of life. According to a survey by the World Health Organization (WHO), between 2010 and 2050, we have to count with 16-17 million new patients every year (Qian et al, 2015). According to a 2013 figure, 36 million patients were registered, so by 2050 the number may reach or even exceed 600 million, which will be further aggravated economically by the care of people living with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. At the same time, the recognized common pathology gives us the opportunity to prevent these plaque diseases and stop their progress.
In several research laboratories around the world, flavonoids such as curcumin, the active ingredient of Turmeric, have been found (Fang et al, 2014; Ma et al, 2012), which are able to
restore the spatial structure of proteins susceptible to malfunction in Alzheimer’s disease, such as Aβ and tau, thereby helping sterile clearance of inflammatory plaque from the brain (Garcia-Alloza et al, 2007; Gerenu et al, 2015; Lopez Gonzalez et al, 2016). Our research group managed to decipher how this happens (Oláh, Pecze, Kocsis and Viskolcz, 2020).
Recently, the beneficial effect of an active substance – similar to curcumin – xanthohumol, which, by analogy, can also dissolve Aβ plaques, has been reported in renowned scientific journals as a sensation (Fang et al, 2013).
This prenylated flavonoid is also one of the active ingredients of hops (Humulus lupulus), so drinking beer shed light on an unexpected beneficial anti-Alzheimer side effect.
References
Fang L, Gou S, Fang X, Cheng L, Fleck C (2013) Current progresses of novel natural products and their derivatives/ analogs as anti-Alzheimer candidates: an update. Mini Rev Med Chem 13: 870-887
Fang L, Gou S, Liu X, Cao F, Cheng L (2014) Design, synthesis and anti-Alzheimer properties of dimethylaminomethyl-substituted curcumin derivatives. Bioorganic & medicinal chemistry letters 24: 40-43
Garcia-Alloza M, Borrelli LA, Rozkalne A, Hyman BT, Bacskai BJ (2007) Curcumin labels amyloid pathology in vivo, disrupts existing plaques, and partially restores distorted neurites in an Alzheimer mouse model. J Neurochem 102: 1095-1104
Gerenu G, Liu K, Chojnacki JE, Saathoff JM, Martinez-Martin P, Perry G, Zhu X, Lee HG, Zhang S (2015) Curcumin/melatonin hybrid 5-(4-hydroxy-phenyl)-3-oxo-pentanoic acid [2-(5-methoxy-1H-indol-3-yl)-ethyl]-amide ameliorates AD-like pathology in the APP/PS1 mouse model. ACS Chem Neurosci 6: 1393-1399
Lopez Gonzalez I, Garcia-Esparcia P, Llorens F, Ferrer I (2016) Genetic and Transcriptomic Profiles of Inflammation in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Alzheimer, Parkinson, Creutzfeldt-Jakob and Tauopathies. Int J Mol Sci 17
Ma QL, Zuo X, Yang F, Ubeda OJ, Gant DJ, Alaverdyan M, Teng E, Hu S, Chen PP, Maiti P, Teter B, Cole GM, Frautschy SA (2012) Curcumin suppresses soluble tau dimers and corrects molecular chaperone, synaptic, and behavioral deficits in aged human tau transgenic mice. The Journal of biological chemistry 288: 4056-4065
Olah, Z., L. Pecze, E. Kocsis, and B. Viskolcz (2020) A "keto-enol" plaque buster mechanism to diminish Alzheimer's β -Amyloid burden. Biochem and Biophys Res. Comm. 532: 82-87. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006291X20314753?via%3Dihub
Qian X, Hamad B, Dias-Lalcaca G (2015) The Alzheimer disease market. Nat Rev Drug Discov 14: 675-676