Degus and Alzheimer's

[malteser60]

So, I'm really bored at work right now, despite having lots of things to do but have zero motivation! So instead I've been reading a few papers about degus and came across an interesting one. (Note that I'm not encouraging or advocating the use of degus in research on this thread, just reporting findings).

So, we all know that degu's are prone to diabetes and are used in research on diabetes. Well, apparently degus are also susceptible to old-age Alzheimer's. And they are the only rodents that have this issue.

It was found that the human Alzheimer's disease neuropathology markers are completely absent in rodent's brains. However with degus they found that these markers are present in degus and they spontaneously develop neuropathological signs of Alzheimer's in old age. The research was conducted on both young and old degus. It was found that the Alzheimer-like changes occured in the aged degus and were not observed in the young degus.

Here is the link and reference if you wish to read the paper:

Inestrosa, N.C., et al. 2005. Human-like rodent amyloid-B-peptide determines Alzheimer pathology in aged wild-type Octodon degu. Neurobiology of Aging, 26, 1023-1028.

Right, better get back to work!

[blossombrooks]

Ah I read that paper too, it's really interesting. Like you I don't agree with animal research but I find more and more that is just mind blowing. We all know degus are special but it's research like this that highlights why they are so special and unique.
Have you read the research on the degus using the rake to retrieve a treat from behind glass? Apparently only monkeys and parrots are the only other animals to do so. That is amazing! Whenever I try to explain how intelligent they are and I get the 'you are crazy woman!' look I always tell people about that. :-)