Wednesday, 2 December 2020

ISRIB: A pill to fix dementia.

 Age-related declines in memory and mental flexibility, or a significant component thereof,  have been reversed in mice and almost with a single dose.  Source is at medicalpress.com

The back story.  When cells are stressed by viral or cancer gene attacks, they try to throttle protein production in those cells.  Aging brain cells are getting some of this throttling too.    "ISR" is "Inegrated Stress Response" and "IB" is "Inhibitor".   ISRIB turns off the throttling and a couple doses seems to restore quite a bit of the cognitive decline in aging and brain-damaged mice without stopping the body's ISR defense against viral and cancer gene attacks.  A single treatment was enough to get aging mice to try flexible maze solutions like their younger counterparts.

An implication:  Senility may be more about idled repair machinery and less about long term degeneration of nerves.

This is almost too good to want to believe, that a generic response to stress casts its net too wide.

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