We present the first comprehensive data set for the aluminium content of brain tissue in donors without a diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease. All donors fulfilled recently revised criteria for control brain tissues¹⁴. Approximately 80% of measured tissues have an aluminium content below 1.0 μg/g dry wt. (Table 1). There are some anomalies, 6 out of 191 tissues have an aluminium content ≥3.00 μg/g dry wt., and these are worth future investigation to identify possible neuropathology. There was no statistically significant relationship between brain aluminium content and age of donor and this observation is contrary to a previous investigation of brain aluminium in a neurologically normal population¹⁵. An explanation may be that herein only two out of twenty donors were below 66 years old. The data do support a conclusion that a high content of brain aluminium is not an inevitability of ageing.

When we compared the new control data set with data produced in an identical manner in donors dying with diagnoses of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (sAD)¹⁶, familial Alzheimer’s disease (fAD)¹¹, autism spectrum disorder (ASD)¹³ and multiple sclerosis (MS)¹² all of these disease groups had significantly higher brain aluminium content. The differences were always highly significant regardless of the method of statistical analysis (Table 4). The largest disease group, designated as sAD, was actually composed of approximately equal numbers of donors previously described by a brain bank as controls and donors diagnosed with sAD. Unfortunately, information discriminating between control and sAD donors was not made available to us¹⁷. However, the observation that the aluminium content of brain tissue in this group as a whole was significantly higher than the similarly aged control group emphasised the likelihood that brain aluminium content is increased in sAD.

Jung, Yu, Choi et al. reveal a critical neuroprotective role of PTMS, while loss of this protein causes severe neurodegeneration. Hypothalamic neural stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles carrying PTMS protect neurons by preventing DNA damage and offer therapeutic benefits against aging-related neurodegenerative and Alzheimer’s-like conditions in animal models.

Researchers at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and University of Ottawa found that high risk of obstructive sleep apnea was associated with approximately 40% higher odds of a composite poor mental health outcome at baseline and follow-up among adults aged 45–85 years in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

Identifying factors associated with mental health outcomes is an important goal on several fronts. Mental health conditions rank among the leading contributors to global disease burden, with anxiety and depressive disorders described as most common. Individuals living with mental health conditions face higher risks of cardiometabolic diseases, unemployment, homelessness, disability, and hospitalizations. Economically, mental disorders carry an estimated $1 trillion annual global cost in lost productivity.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) involves repeated upper airway narrowing during sleep. Disturbed breathing can break up sleep (sleep fragmentation), trigger a stress response in the nervous system (sympathetic activation), and cause episodes of low oxygen in the blood (intermittent hypoxemia).