Ongoing Research Shows Aluminum Exposure a Likely Contributor to Alzheimer’s Disease

A new review article entitled “Why industry propaganda and political interference cannot disguise the inevitable role played by human exposure to aluminum in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease,” published in Frontiers in Neurology, argues the role of aluminum in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

The study author, Professor Christopher Exley, Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry, Aluminum and Silicon Research Group at The Birchall Centre’s Lennard-Jones Laboratories at Keele University, UK is a renowned researcher on human exposure to aluminum and its impact on disease. In this review, Professor Exley discusses the human brain as a target for aluminum, and its accumulation throughout a person’s lifetime. As a result, this accumulation inevitably has detrimental effects to brain function and thus represents a potential driver for Alzheimer’s disease. The author highlights the urgency to test the aluminum-Alzheimer’s disease link, which will only be possible by controlling aluminum levels, particularly by decreasing its burden on the brain and how it impacts Alzheimer’s incidence, onset, and aggressiveness.

“The biological availability of aluminum or the ease with which aluminum reacts with human biochemistry means that aluminum in the body is unlikely to be benign, though it may appear as such due to the inherent robustness of human physiology,” Professor Exley commented. “The question is raised as to ‘how do you know if you are suffering from chronic aluminum toxicity?’ How do we know that Alzheimer’s disease is not the manifestation of chronic aluminum toxicity in humans?”

Dr. Exley goes on to say that, at some point in time, the accumulation of aluminum in the brain will reach a toxic threshold, and a specific neuron or area of the brain will stop coping with the presence of aluminum and will start reacting to its presence. If the same neurone or brain tissue is also suffering other insults, or another ongoing degenerative condition, then the additional response to aluminum will exacerbate these effects. “In this way,” he said, “aluminum may cause a particular condition to be more aggressive and perhaps to have an earlier onset — such occurrences have already been shown in Alzheimer’s disease related to environmental and occupational exposure to aluminum.”

Professor Exley added, “There are neither cures nor effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. The role of aluminum in Alzheimer’s disease can be prevented by reducing human exposure to aluminum and by removing aluminum from the body by non-invasive means. Why are we choosing to miss out on this opportunity? Surely the time has come to test the aluminum hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease once and for all?”