Join the Polar Bear Club to beat your Alzheimer's!

RNA binding protein 3, or RBM3 is a protein whose design is specified in the RBM3 gene.  The gene is especially "expressed" -- or used to generate the RBM3 protein -- when the body is exposed to cold stress.  It's notably present in winter-time hibernating mammals.  What RBM3 does in different cells is complex, sometimes doing good things, sometimes doing bad things.  It can work against some cancers, but it can promote others.  Can it have an effect, for better or worse, on your brain cells? 

My pastor sent me this article about research with mice showing that perhaps driving body temperature down and then raising it carefully may combat dementia.  The article was based on research discussed in Nature Reviews Neurology which purported to find that mice with a disorder similar to Alzheimer's disease in humans experienced repairs to some neurons when their body temperatures were radically decreased and then carefully raised.  The RBM3 thus generated apparently repaired synapses and altered the course of their diseases.  They said that RBM3 in their research "prevented loss of synapses and alleviated behavioral and memory impairments." 

What got the researchers looking into this?  It began with looking into the possible health benefits of the cold water dips of the Polar Bear Club and long-standing rumors that plunging into freezing water somehow benefited people's health.

Do you need to join the Polar Bear Club to get your RBM3 busy?  One idea is that a virus can be used to artificially insert RBM3 protein into cells.  So maybe you can skip the dip.

So how far away is an RBM3 therapy?  Pretty far.  This research is very preliminary, and it only points to possibilities. 

Here's the standard disclaimer on mouse models:  Mice are not people.  In the past, research with mice has generated a great deal of excitement until it was learned that a phenomenon with mice could not be replicated in humans.  Also, mice don't get Alzheimer's disease.  Instead, their genome (their DNA) can be modified to produce a disorder similar to Alzheimer's disease in humans, but it's not the same.