Alzheimer's Disease Research Paper

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Hewan Gunjo Med. 133 Research Journal #3 This article discusses Alzheimer’s disease, and the authors write about research on the effectiveness of Icariin (ICA), a type of flavonoid, in treating the disease. Sheng et al. (2017) write that Alzheimer’s is a disease marked by “gradual memory loss and deterioration of higher cognitive function” (p. 1). It is the main cause of dementia in people around the world. The flavonoid known as Icariin (ICA), which is found in the Chinese herb, “Epimedium brevicornum,” is known to have medicinal properties, and these researchers tested to see if the compound could reduce the effects of Alzheimer’s in lab rats. A study was conducted in which the brains of 60 rats were initially injected with amyloid beta compound to simulate the effects of the Alzheimer’s disease (2017, p. 2). Patients with Alzheimer’s develop these plaques in their brains, so the injection is given to induce Alzheimer’s symptoms in the rats. The rats were then divided into 5 groups: a control group, a group receiving an injection of saline solution, a group receiving saline with 30 mg/kg of ICA, one receiving 60mg/kg of ICA, and one group receiving 120 mg/kg of ICA (2017, p. 3). The rats were then tested in a Morris water maze (MWM) to see if there were any differences between the completion times and other markers of the test …show more content…

After the maze test, the brains of the rats were examined, and the ICA treatment “increased the number of synapses, the percentage of perforated synapses, the synaptic active zone length, the PSD thickness, and the synaptic curvature while narrowing the synaptic cleft and reducing the percentage of flat synapses” (2017, p.5). In other words, the brains of the ICA groups had improved physically compared to the control group and saline-only

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