Alzheimer's may begin with the brain losing lithium

Researchers at Harvard Medical School measured trace metals in postmortem human brain tissue and found lithium was the only one significantly reduced in people with mild cognitive impairment, an early stage before Alzheimer's, and lower still in Alzheimer's disease.

Amyloid plaques, the sticky protein clumps associated with Alzheimer's, were found to trap lithium and lower its levels even in nearby plaque-free tissue. When researchers fed mice a lithium-deficient diet, amyloid and tau buildup accelerated and the mice performed worse on memory tests; lithium orotate given at a very low dose prevented that damage and reversed memory loss in Alzheimer model mice.

The treated mice showed no sign of the kidney and thyroid harm that limits standard psychiatric lithium, which raises blood lithium about a thousand times above natural levels. The work was done in postmortem tissue and in mice, not in a clinical trial, and whether low-dose lithium can prevent or treat Alzheimer's in people is now the question a human trial would need to answer.

A trace mineral the brain may need all along.