Aluminum and Alzheimers

Factual Questions
1

I could swear Cecil covered this once already, but I did a search and could not find anything. Is aluminum still thought to cause alzheimers disease? I heard at one time there was a theory that there was some kind of plaque that builds up in the brain, and that aluminum was no longer a suspect. Does anyone have the SD on the current state of affairs regarding the cause of alzheimers disease, and is aluminum still suspected?

2

I haven’t seen Aluminum mentioned with respect to Alzheimers in ages. However, soluble aluminum salts such as Al Cl3 are extremely effective at disassociating multi subunit proteins, and disrupting the native structure of single subunit proteins. With many proteins,5-10 mM AlCl3 has a dissociative effect very similar to 6M guanidineHCl !

3

Here’s Cecil’s column on this:

I searched for “aluminum” at this link:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/index.html

Arjuna34