Research news: Studies find link between Alzheimer's, Calcium

The News:
Studies Find Link Between Alzheimer's, Calcium
by Jonathan Hamilton
All Things Considered, June 25, 2008 · Sticky clumps of protein called amyloid usually get the blame for causing Alzheimer's disease. But the real culprit may be calcium, according to a pair of studies published in the research journals Cell and Neuron.
"These two papers together will force everyone in the Alzheimer's field to put the calcium hypothesis much more on the map than it has been," says Kevin Foskett of the University of Pennsylvania, who is an author on both studies.
"This begins to suggest that calcium may be something we can't afford to ignore," says Sam Gandy, chairman of the national Medical and Scientific Advisory Council of the Alzheimer's Association and an Alzheimer's researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
The new studies look at the connection between Alzheimer's and the way brain cells regulate the amount of calcium they contain.
In order to stay healthy, brain cells need to maintain just the right amount of calcium at any given moment. That depends on the cells responding to signals from elsewhere in the brain. Read on...

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Cell.