A new study released on Monday suggests that copper may be another cause of the Alzheimer's disease by causing plaque buildup in the brain. However, critics and experts were not so convinced with the researchers' analysis.
The study was authored by Rashid Deane, a research professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center. His team experimented on mice and human cells by exposing them to low levels of copper that humans usually consume in a regular basis when drinking water.
Copper is a mineral present in red meat, dairy products, and drinking water.
Deane's experiment presented how the copper is deposited in the capillaries and stays there until it builds up and blocks the normal flow of blood to the brain. When not enough blood flows to the brain, a protein amyloid beta starts forming. Scientists have long linked this protein to Alzheimer's disease.
The study published in the online journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences implied that everyone is at risk since all of us are exposed to copper and prolonged exposure will have all of us end up getting the disease. However, when asked about the safe level of copper to prevent Alzheimer's, the researchers couldn't give a direct answer.
"The key will be striking the right balance between too little and too much copper consumption. Right now we cannot say what the right level will be, but diet may ultimately play an important role in regulating this process," Deane said in a statement in AFP.
Experts commented on Deane's findings. One of them is Christopher Exley, a professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Keele University in Staffordshire and lead author of a study published in February in the British journal Nature, arguing that his study proved that copper helps in preventing the formation of protein amyloid beta. Deane's study is contradictory.
"As a group we would be thinking, based on everything that we know -- and our research has been done with human brains and brain tissues -- that if anything, copper would be protective against Alzheimer's," told Exley in AFP.
Another researcher, George Brewer, emeritus professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan medical school, also saw loopholes in the study.
"They don't differentiate copper delivered in drinking water, as they delivered it in their study, from copper in food," Brewer said in an email to AFP.
"We have always had copper in food, so it couldn't possibly be the cause of this new AD epidemic," he said.
