Alzheimer’s & Resveratrol

Katharine Frost

Need• 26 million people worldwide have

Alzheimer’s.

• 1 in 10 people over 65 have Alzheimer’s

• 40% of people over 80 have Alzheimer’s

Fundamentals

• Most common form of dementia (Segal and Wayne, 2009)

• Caused by accumulation of Ab peptide and neurofibrary tangles in brain (Segal and Wayne, 2009)

Model Organisms & Types of Alzheimer’s

• Drosophila make good model organism for studying Alzheimer’s (Korschun, 2006)

• 2 types of Alzheimer’s disease, hereditary and non hereditary (Korschun, 2006)

• APOE4 gene causes non hereditary Alzheimer’s (Korschun, 2006)

Non hereditary Alzheimer’s

• Non hereditary Alzheimer’s may be caused by oxidative stress (Korschun, 2006)

• Possible treatments for non hereditary Alzhiemer’s are high doses of anti oxidants (Cummings, 2009)

Resveratrol

• Found in grapes an red wine (Cummings, 2009)

• Studies show that it reduced & prevented the buildups of amyloid plaques (Patton, 2005)

• Possible treatment for Non hereditary Alzheimer’s; helps balance out oxidative stress (Patton, 2005)

Literature Review

• Philippe Marambaud (2008) found that Resveratrol as found in gapes, helps to prevent oxidative stress and therefore prevent the development and appearance of symptoms in non hereditary Alzheimer’s

Literature Review

• Srinivasan (2006) determined that melatonin may also have potential to be a treatment as it increases the survival of neurons under oxidative stress