Archive for the ‘High cholesterol diet’ Category
A diet rich in cholesterol, as harmful as Alzheimer
A high cholesterol diet causes brain damage similar to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study in rats by researchers from the Laboratory of Experimental Psychiatry and Research in Alzheimer Medical University of Innsbruck (Austria), published in the journal Molecular Cellular Neuroscience.
This research was led by Dr. Christian Humpel, in collaboration with students in his laboratory and Michael Pirchl Celine Ullrich. Its aim was to study the effects of hypercholesterolemia in adult rats, for which male rats fed six months with normal food (control group) or a diet with 5 percent more cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia).
After five months, the researchers looked in these animals damage and behavioral pathological markers similar to those that occur in the brains of Alzheimer patients. The results showed that chronic hypercholesterolemic causes memory loss, inflammation, cholinergic dysfunction and increased protein called beta-amyloid in the cortex, all symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s.
Although recent data are on the same line and several recent studies have shown that cholesterol may participate in the development of Alzheimer’s, since this disease has been classified as a complex and heterogeneous disease, these data did not allow the conclusion that cholesterol is only responsible for this disease. Read the rest of this entry »