According to new research from the University of Leeds Natural, chemicals found in green tea and red wine may disrupt a key step of the Alzheimer’s disease pathway.
In early-stage laboratory experiments, the researchers identified the process that allows harmful clumps of protein
to latch on to brain cells, causing them to die.
They were able to interrupt this pathway using the purified extracts of EGCG from green tea and resveratrol from red wine.
The findings offer potential new targets for developing drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is characterised by a distinct build-up of amyloid protein in the brain, which clumps together to form toxic, sticky balls of varying shapes.
These amyloid balls latch on to the surface of nerve cells in the brain by attaching to proteins on the cell surface called prions, causing the nerve cells to malfunction and eventually die.