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ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

Arginine for Alzheimer's

New role for arginine in Alzheimer's disease

April 23, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

A group at Duke University has found that blocking overconsumption of arginine in the brain could prevent the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and that - counter to the prevailing view - local immune suppression rather than overactivation of immune pathways is the cause.

The solution isn't as simple as providing arginine supplementation because the root of the problem is overactivity of arginase 1 (ARG1), an immunosuppressive protein that alters utilization of arginine. ...