Scientists from the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco report in the February 11, 2015 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience that raising levels of the life-extending protein klotho can protect against learning and memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Remarkably, this boost in cognition occurred despite the accumulation of Alzheimer-related toxins in the brain, such as amyloid-beta and tau. Klotho decreases naturally with aging, which also leads to a decline in cognitive ability. An earlier study from these researchers revealed that having a genetic variant that increases klotho levels is associated with better cognition in normal, healthy individuals, and experimentally elevating klotho in mice enhances learning and memory. However, klotho’s influence in the face of aging-related cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s disease was unclear. To test klotho’s protective capacity, the scientists created a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease that produced higher levels of this protein throughout the body. Ordinarily, Alzheimer’s-model mice have cognitive deficits, abnormal brain activity, and premature death, but raising klotho levels meliorated these problems. The cognition-enhancing effects of the protein were powerful enough to counteract the effects of Alzheimer-related toxins, whose levels were unchanged. “It’s remarkable that we can improve cognition in a diseased brain despite the fact that it’s riddled with toxins,” says lead author Dena Dubal, M.D., Ph.D, (http://profiles.ucsf.edu/dena.dubal)an Assistant Professor of Neurology and the David A. Coulter Endowed Chair in Aging and Neurodegenerative Disease at UCSF. “In addition to making healthy mice smarter, we can make the brain resistant to Alzheimer-related toxicity.Login Or Register To Read Full Story