Eating Rubbish

A well-known pathological hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is the build-up within the brain of protein plaques – like the one pictured (coloured blue). Since these plaques are considered to contribute to the memory loss and cognitive decline associated with the disease, researchers are investigating various ways to promote their removal. One recent idea is treatment with a fatty compound called N-oleoyl-leucine (OLE) – based on the finding that humans with unusually low levels of the OLE-producing enzyme PM20D1 are more prone to developing Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers treated mice daily (via their drinking water) for three months with OLE and found that these mice had significantly better memory performance when compared with control mice. OLE seems to prompt the brain’s microglia (coloured red) into gobbling up plaques. In the test mice, microglial activity was ramped up, the cells homed in on plaques, and plaque numbers were consequently diminished.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Victoria Pozzi-Ruiz and colleagues
• Laboratory of Functional Epi-Genomics of Aging and Alzheimer’s disease, Instituto de Neurociencias, Universidad Miguel Hernández-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (UMH-CSIC), Alicante, Spain
• Image originally published as 'Credit must be given to the creator' equating to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Cell Death & Disease, April 2026