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Targeting SphK2 in hypertension-induced neurodegeneration

Yang, Minglin (2020) MOBM02 20192
Degree Projects in Molecular Biology
Popular Abstract
Does treating high blood pressure improve neurodegeneration

High blood pressure, also called hypertension could damage the brain. Our research tries to understand how lowering blood pressure affects the hypertensive brain.
Hypertension is the disease that people have abnormally high blood pressure. Nowadays, 1 in 5 people worldwide have hypertension, accounting for 1.13 billion people. This causes it to be a major public health problem. Hypertension is a silent disease, which usually has no symptoms. People may not notice themselves that they have hypertension. However, hypertension is the leading risk factors for many diseases like heart attack, stroke and even dementia.

Dementia including Alzheimer’s disease is the 6th risk... (More)
Does treating high blood pressure improve neurodegeneration

High blood pressure, also called hypertension could damage the brain. Our research tries to understand how lowering blood pressure affects the hypertensive brain.
Hypertension is the disease that people have abnormally high blood pressure. Nowadays, 1 in 5 people worldwide have hypertension, accounting for 1.13 billion people. This causes it to be a major public health problem. Hypertension is a silent disease, which usually has no symptoms. People may not notice themselves that they have hypertension. However, hypertension is the leading risk factors for many diseases like heart attack, stroke and even dementia.

Dementia including Alzheimer’s disease is the 6th risk factor of death in U.S.A. Neurodegenerative processes that can cause dementia often start with small changes in brain cells that lead to nerve cells dying. People with neurodegenerative diseases often have memory loss, which reduces the life quality and makes them forget to take their medication, which will worsen their general health status. To date, we cannot treat neurodegeneration. For this reason, it is important to research this field and understand how the disease develops.

Researchers found that high blood pressure damages the brain.
Hypertension negatively influences the different cells in the brain. Our lab investigates a substance that decreases blood pressure. In this project, we want to test whether lowering blood pressure with this medication could also help these brain cells.

After inducing hypertension in mice, we treat them with our drug. Two weeks later, we test their memory function and look at the nerve cell structure in the brain. We also test if our blood pressure lowering drug helped the different types of brain cells that are affected during hypertension.

We found that our blood pressure lowering medication has the potential to recover certain cell structures of nerve cells. But it does not help all cells in the brain similarly well. We will need to continue researching why we help some but not other cells in the brain with this treatment.

Master’s Degree Molecular Biology 30 credits 2020
Department of Biology, Lund University

Advisor: Anja Meissner
Department of Experimental Medical Science (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Yang, Minglin
supervisor
organization
course
MOBM02 20192
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
language
English
id
9006991
date added to LUP
2020-03-23 11:29:01
date last changed
2020-03-23 11:29:01
@misc{9006991,
  author       = {{Yang, Minglin}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Targeting SphK2 in hypertension-induced neurodegeneration}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}