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Q&A with Australian Health Practitioners
What is amyloidosis?
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Dr Simon Easterbrook-Smith
Health Professional
My research interests include immunology and the mechanisms of amyloid formation. The latter has implications for people who are dealing with Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease … View Profile
Amyloidosis is a general term which refers to a number of diseases. They have one thing in common which is related to protein structure.
For a protein to carry out its biological function it needs to adopt a precise three-dimensional shape - this process is called “protein folding”.
Sometimes, for reasons that are not well understood, and probably vary depending on the protein concerned, proteins adopt a “wrong” three-dimensional shape - they “misfold”, forming amyloid. Amyloid, especially the early intermediates in its formation, is cytotoxic (it kills cells).
Common amyloidoses (with the name of the amyloid-forming protein in brackets) are: Alzheimer's Disease (Abeta), Parkinson's Disease (alpha-synuclein) and, to some extent, Type 2 Diabetes (amylin/IAPP).
A lot of reseach effort is being invested in understanding the process of amyloid formation. At the moment it is at the “basic science” stage - once we know more that knowledge will help in developing treatments for the amyloidoses.Report this post
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