“Plaques and tangles in the brain cause Alzheimer’s disease” – until now, that’s been the dominant working theory among Alzheimer’s researchers. But new research suggests that just one of those two, tangles caused by the buildup of the protein tau, is the real culprit behind the cognitive impairment and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

“The dogma has been for a very long time, if you have Alzheimer’s disease, you have to have plaques or tangles [twisted fibers of tau],” the study’s senior investigator, Charbel E-H Moussa, MB, assistant professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University Medical Center, told FoxNews.com. “What we’re finding here is you probably have to have tangles and tau losing function, but don’t necessarily have to have plaque to have Alzheimer’s disease, because it’s only a product, not the cause.”

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