Researchers Use Ultrasound To Help Treat Patients With Alzheimers

According to researchers, one of the reasons they believe could be the reason behind people developing Alzheimer’s is due to the build-up of proteins around the brain cells. If there was some way that these protein build-ups could be flushed out, that could potentially help cure or treat the symptoms, right?

That’s something that researchers at West Virginia University are looking into, and they have found that by using ultrasound, it shows some promise on that front. By using ultrasound, the researchers claim that this could help “flush” the waste chemicals from the brain through the glympathic system.

At the moment, the experiment only involves three volunteers with early-stage Alzheimer’s, so it can hardly be called conclusive. However, based on their experiment which used contrast-enhancement dyes to help the researchers track the chemicals through MRI scans, they found that ultrasound helped the chemicals move from the brain’s draining vents.

According to Rashi Mehtam, the lead researcher in the experiment, “The glymphatic system, which is a fluid-movement and waste-clearance system that’s unique to the brain, has been studied in animals, but there is controversy about whether this system truly exists in humans. The imaging pattern that we discuss in the paper offers evidence not only to support that the system does likely exist in humans but that focused ultrasound may modulate fluid movement patterns and immunological responses along this system.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Medical
Tags: Health, Science, Social Hit