(David Nield/ Science Alert) — The more we understand about Alzheimer’s, the faster we can work towards better treatments and ultimately a cure, which makes discovering four distinct subtypes of the brain disease an important one.
Using machine learning algorithms trained at brain scans of 1,143 people either with healthy brains or brains affected by Alzheimer’s, scientists have identified four distinct ways tau proteins get tangled up among neurons.
Misshapen tau proteins are closely linked to the development and progression of Alzheimer’s, but it was thought that the pattern of tau entanglement in the brain was more or less the same in everyone with the disease.
“We identified four clear patterns of tau pathology that became distinct over time,” says neurologist Oskar Hansson from Lund University in Sweden. (…)