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ALZHEIMER DISEASE

Amyloid-β ‘seeds’ found in archived vials of growth hormone

Nature Reviews Neurology volume 15, page 60 (2019)Cite this article

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Amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide with the capacity to seed brain amyloid deposition has been detected in archived vials of human cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone (c-hGH), a new paper in Nature reports. This discovery could explain why some patients who were treated with c-hGH developed Aβ pathology at a young age, despite a lack of genetic risk factors for diseases characterized by Aβ aggregation, such as Alzheimer disease (AD) and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA).

A team led by John Collinge at the UCL Institute of Prion Diseases, London, UK, obtained vials of c-hGH from the batches that were used in the patients who developed CJD. Biochemical analysis confirmed that these vials contained potentially pathogenic Aβ peptides.

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References

Original article

  • Purro, S. A. et al. Transmission of amyloid-β protein pathology from cadaveric pituitary growth hormone. Nature 564, 415–419 (2018)

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Further reading

  • Jaunmuktane, Z. et al. Evidence for human transmission of amyloid-β pathology and cerebral amyloid angiopathy. Nature 525, 247–250 (2015)

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  1. Nature Reviews Neurology http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/

    Heather Wood

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  1. Heather Wood
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Correspondence to Heather Wood.

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Wood, H. Amyloid-β ‘seeds’ found in archived vials of growth hormone. Nat Rev Neurol 15, 60 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-018-0125-5

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