The Renin Angiotensin System (RAS) in Alzheimer's disease
Following Pat Kehoe's findings of ACE1 association with Alzheimer's disease and work elsewhere showing that from in vitro and cell based assays that the enzyme produced by ACE1 (ACE) has been shown to degrade Aβ (a key feature of Alzheimer's disease and Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy pathology) it soon became clear that further understanding of the role of this system in the brain was needed to try to broaden the limited picture that was present from a only a small number of studies. To begin to address this Dr Kehoe has one BRACE funded graduate student (co-supervised by Professor Seth Love) project underway being undertaken by Laura Palmer to qualitatively map the topography of a considerable number of RAS components with respect to brain distribution in the elderly and how it relates or is changed in Alzheimer's disease (see also the section on the contribution of cardiovascular risk factors to AD for more detail). A second ART funded graduate student (Emma Ashby) project (also co-supervised by Professor Seth Love) commencing in Autumn 2007 will investigate the role of the connected bradykinin pathway in the brain and its relationship to RAS component variation, Alzheimer's disease pathology and the integrity of the Blood Brain Barrier. The following taken from Kehoe and Wilcock, Lancet Neurology 2007 summarises current hypotheses surrounding the involvement of RAS in Alzheimer's disease.