Medicine: Medicine: Oct. 2, 1989

Alzheimer's disease, among the most horrifying to strike the elderly, is also one of the most mysterious. Now scientists have found a small but tantalizing clue to its workings. Dr. Dennis J. Selkoe, co-director of the Center for Neurologic Diseases at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, led a team of researchers that detected deposits of beta amyloid protein, long associated with Alzheimer's, in the skin, blood vessels and intestines of patients with the disorder. Previously the beta amyloid had been found only in the brains of Alzheimer's victims. The study, reported in last week's Nature, suggests that Alzheimer's may not begin...