What came first, the plaque or the damaged neuron?

Darkfrog submitted, created time 9 months 1 week (www.nature.com)

By using cranial window surgery in lab mice, researchers from Harvard Medical have managed to figure out whether it is the neuron damage that causes (or at least precedes) the plaque in Alzheimer's patients or the other way around.

The results imply that it is the plaques that cause microglial accumulation, and that the microglia restrain the growth of these plaques.

The part that seems most interesting to me is the speed at which the plaques form. Very rarely do discussions of the studies talk about the speed. The practical upshot of this is that any treatment developed based upon this study's findings will have to be either preventative or paired with an extremely effective early detections system.

Keywords: plaques microglia Alzheimers disease Alzheimers causality causation