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Article: A HEAVY METAL THAT GUMS UP AD'S WORKS ZINC IN BRAIN PILES ON MOLECULAR NEMESIS OF ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE - AMYLOID-BETA PEPTIDE PLAQUES.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- BIOWORLD Today
- Article date:
- April 30, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If you moisten a piece of metallic zinc foil, it will burst into flames. And a quantity of zinc dust, if exposed to air, also will ignite.
What this pyromaniacal metal has to do with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the topic of a paper in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), dated April 30, 2002. Its title offers a couple of hints: "Contribution by synaptic zinc to the gender- disparate plaque formation in human . . . mutant APP transgenic mice." Its senior author is research neurologist Jae-Young Koh, who directs the Center for the Study of Central Nervous System Zinc at the University of Ulsan in Seoul, Korea. A co-author is