"THE HEART OF THE MATTER"
a special program of the National Emergency Medicine Association (NEMA)

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Week: 585.5 

Guest: Dr. John Trojanowski, Chief, Alzheimer’s Center, U. of Pennsylvania 

Topic: Causes of Alzheimer’s 

Host/Producer: Steve Girard 

NEMA: The causes of Alzheimer’s...coming up... 

SPOT: NEMA...the National Emergency Medicine Association...fights our worst health enemies - heart disease, stroke, trauma. Call 800-332-6362. 

NEMA: A recent find in Alzheimer’s research has been the presence of a waxy substance or plaque, called amyloid, which engulfs brain matter...and Dr. John Trojanowski of the Alzheimer’s Center at Penn says they’ve found a new plaque that may be more closely connected to the disease...  

TROJANOWSKI: I guess it would be similar to pouring honey onto a computer processing unit...lifting off the connections or the contacts between chips and so forth. This is what we assume amyloid does...and by analogy, the new plaque lesion that we described probably does something similar.  

NEMA: Researchers are trying to find why the overproduction of what’s called ‘A beta peptide’ occurs, and why this waxy protein deposit builds up...  

TROJANOWSKI: If you and I clear it as we make it, we may live to be 90, 100, 110...never develop plaques, or Alzheimer’s disease because our clearance mechanisms match our production of the ‘A beta’ peptide.  

NEMA: Finding and manipulating the gene responsible for producing the protein, could result in better diagnosis and treatment. I’m Steve Girard at The Heart of the Matter.