Alzheimer's and lack of arginine

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Arginine is especially abundant in common food such as dairy products, meat, nuts and chickpeas!

(from Dairy Council of California)

Recent study described here:

Alzheimer's breakthrough: Scientists may have found potential cause of the disease in the behaviour of immune cells..

Quote:

They observed that in Alzheimer’s, immune cells that normally protect the brain instead begin to consume a vital nutrient called arginine.

My comment:

Probably because arginine is an essential nutrient for all cells including immune cells. If there is not enough, immune cells will sequester what is available.

Arginine is an amino acid and an essential nutrient for several bodily processes, including cell division, healing and immune responses.

It is found in food, including dairy products, meat, nuts and chickpeas, but the team at Duke said that their study did not suggest eating more arginine would have an impact on Alzheimer’s risk. The blood-brain barrier regulates how much arginine can enter the brain, and the immune response that breaks down arginine would remain the same even if confronted with higher levels of the nutrient.

Really?  Dr. Pickett must be a very wise man knowing that upfront and thus excluding that therapeutic option by his statement, without doing any testing!

“The study suggests that low levels of arginine in the brain could contribute to the death of nerve cells in Alzheimer’s, but there is much more we still need to understand about how and why nerve cells die in the disease,” she added.

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