Alzheimer’s disease is an insidious condition that affects many of us as we age. Although science continues to make significant advances in our understanding of the condition, we still have a long way to go.
One thing most of us would not have expected research to uncover, though, is that some people may have inadvertently acquired Alzheimer’s through hormone injections. The shock possibility follows the recording of Alzheimer’s developing in five people who had received growth hormones from deceased donors’ brains as children.
From the 1950s until the mid 1980s, children around the world with growth issues were given such injections, derived from the pituitary gland in the brains of donor cadavers.
But this approach was banned globally when some recipients died from a rare condition called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after receiving hormones contaminated with misfolded proteins called prions. Prions cause progressive and irreparable damage to the brain and nervous system by clumping together and making other proteins misfold.
Now researchers at University College London have identified a small group of other people who may have developed Alzheimer’s disease from these treatments. A key characteristic of Alzheimer’s is the abnormal build-up of two misfolded proteins in the brain, which is similar to the prion-related conditions.
The researchers posed contaminated injections as a plausible cause, but with the study involving only eight people, much of the research is speculative. As one expert pointed out, the study doesn’t definitively prove that these recipients developed Alzheimer’s in this way.
It does, however, highlight the possibility of unintended consequences when new medical techniques and procedures are introduced.
Have you had any ‘new’ medical procedures that did not work as intended?
.