Sleep in mice affects the formation of amyloid-β plaques — the protein clumps found in the brain in Alzheimer's disease.
David Holtzman from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues measured amyloid-β levels every hour in the brains of mice engineered to express a mutant form of the human APP gene, which codes for the amyloid-β precursor. They found that amyloid-β levels rose when the animals were awake and fell when they slept. Normal mice and humans showed similar patterns.
When the authors deprived the mice of sleep, amyloid-β levels increased by 20–25%. When they blocked a neurotransmitter that induces wakefulness, they saw lower amyloid-β levels and fewer plaques.
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Neuroscience: Wake up to dementia. Nature 461, 573 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461573b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/461573b