What?
Inflammatory proteins..............
The study screened each participant’s blood for nine cytokines to see if any were associated with the rate of cognitive decline and changes in the brain. The study found that people whose brains had a significant burden of amyloid beta, but who also had high levels of a pro-inflammatory cytokine called interleukin-12 (IL-12), experienced little cognitive decline.
“However, men and women with elevated levels of amyloid declined more if they had a lower value of IL-12,” says lead author Hyun-Sik Yang, MD, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a HABS co-investigator. High levels of IL-12 were also associated with fewer tau tangles. Meanwhile, elevated levels of another pro-inflammatory cytokine, interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), were associated with slower cognitive decline, whether or not a person had deposits of amyloid.