Researchers have identified lesions similar to those caused by Alzheimer’s disease in dolphins.

Scottish researchers have identified “natural progression” of lesions in cetaceans similar to those caused by the neurodegenerative disease Alzheimer’s that have so far been “unique in humans,” pathologist Mark Dugleysh, one of the participants in the discovery, told EFE.

From autopsies of aging dolphins washed ashore off the coast of Scotland, researchers believe they have found a clue to explaining their disorientation and intend to use the discovery to improve our understanding of disease in humans.

“We saw the same signs of the disease that we see in people with Alzheimer’s,” explained Daglish, chair of the Department of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Glasgow and leader of the study, published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Caution, the researcher responsible for post-mortem analysis of cetaceans points out that it is still impossible to say that the animals suffered from the disease, since in addition to physical tests it is necessary to demonstrate “cognitive deficiencies”, which can only be studied “in life”.

Mark Dugleysh argues that the best opportunity for this is the cognitive study of captive or zoo dolphins because their caretakers “know when the animals are undergoing some change in their behavior, habits, or responses.”

Researcher Tara Spears-Jones, who is in charge of the field of neurodegeneration at the University of Edinburgh, set out to look for similarities between lesions in the cetacean and human brains.

According to the researcher, these similarities were found in three different species of dolphins, which were found to coexist with amyloid plaques, “a phenomenon that occurs in healthy individuals as they age,” along with “neurofibrillary tangles,” another necessary ingredient. y develop dementia.

Plaques are a consequence of the inability of the brain to clear the secretion of amyloid protein from neurons, while tangles are due to abnormal accumulation of tau protein, the accumulation of both of which is the key to neurodegeneration.

The symptoms found in cetaceans “resemble the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in humans, rather than its full end stage,” Tara Spires-Jones explained to Spanish news agency EFE.

Research group consisting of experts from the universities of Edinburgh, St. Petersburg. Andrews and Glasgow are now focused on “getting more funding” to be able to expand their trials, which have so far been conducted on 22 samples, added Mark Dugleysh.

The pathologist wonders if this discovery could explain the large number of beached cetaceans: “Why is this happening when most of the animals appear to be healthy?”

The researcher explained that some of these animals “live in family groups” and “if one of them gets sick, the others feed him,” and therefore none of them are left out due to the cohesion of the group.

As a rule, the leader is already advanced in age and is “often” an “adult female” who, as the disease progresses, can lose “the ability to understand where she is in three dimensions, which is very important in the life of a dolphin,” he said, in turn. Spears-Jones.

“She gets sick, gets disoriented,” he describes, “and ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time,” on “a shallow beach at high tide,” running aground shortly thereafter.

Mark Daglish highlights the importance of this discovery for wild dolphin species: “This may give us insight into [da doença de Alzheimer] and identify what first changes it causes”, something that could allow “better diagnosing people”.