Affiliations: Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Correspondence to: Jan K. Blusztajn, PhD, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, 72 East Newton Street, Boston, MA 02118, USA. Tel.: 1-617-358-9588; E-mail: jbluszta@bu.edu.
Note: [] Dedicated to the memory of Richard J. Wurtman (1936-2022)
Abstract: Numerous studies have demonstrated defects in multiple metabolic pathways in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), detected in autopsy brains and in the cerebrospinal fluid in vivo. However, until the advent of techniques capable of measuring thousands of metabolites in a single sample, it has not been possible to rank the relative magnitude of these abnormalities. A recent study provides evidence that the abnormal turnover of the brain’s most abundant phospholipids: phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine, constitutes a major metabolic pathology in AD. We place this observation in a historical context and discuss the implications of a central role for phospholipid metabolism in AD pathogenesis.
