Mercury Linked to Alzheimer's Disease
Leong, CW; Syed, NI; Lorscheider, FL.26-Mar-01

CALGARY, CANADA--Researchers at the University of Calgary Medical School have presented the visual evidence of Mercury's effect on growing nerve cells, another correlation to Alzheimer's disease. These findings may influence the future acceptance of mercury-containing vaccines and "mercury/silver amalgam" dental fillings.

Utilizing digital time-lapse photography to display the damage to nerve cells that minute amounts of mercury cause, researchers Leong, Syed and Lorscheider experimented with mercury levels that are similar to or below those levels of mercury found in the brains of humans with "mercury/silver amalgam" dental fillings.

The peer-reviewed study published in the prestigious journal NeuroReports provides visual documentation of the biochemical mechanism by which the introduction of mercury induces hallmark diagnostic markers indistinguishable from those seen in the Alzheimer's diseased brain. The authors note that, to date, no other material or metal tested, including aluminum, has produced even remotely similar reactions.

The broadcast quality video and animation documenting the biochemical process of mercury on the nerve cells is available to interested members of the press through Miss Karen Thomas, Media Relations, University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine T: 403-2202945 F: 403-210-8141 Email: Thomas@ucalgary The video can be viewed using Quicktime 4.1 at http://commons.ucalgary.ca/mercury .

The video that accompanies the study entitled, "Retrograde Degeneration of Neurite Membrane Structural Integrity of Nerve Growth Cones Following In Vitro Exposure to Mercury" was funded by the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT), the recognized stakeholder experts on Mercury in Canada.

The IAOMT was formed to review, support, and disseminate research on the suitability of materials and methodologies used in the dental practice. The IAOMT has funded previous research by Dr. Murray Vimy on the mercury vapors released from mercury amalgam fillings during and after chewing, animal research showing pathopysiological damage to sheep and monkeys from dental amalgam mercury vapor exposure. Collaborative research with the Calgary authors of this current study and Dr. Boyd Haley at the University of Kentucky demonstrated Alzheimer's disease-like brain damage to rats from inhaled mercury vapor.

Dr. Haley, commenting on the importance of this new documentation, "Seven of the characteristic markers that we look for to distinguish Alzheimer's disease can be produced in normal brain tissues, or cultures of neurons, by the addition of extremely low levels of mercury*. In addition, research has shown that Alzheimer's diseased patients have at least 3 times higher blood levels of mercury than controls. How much more research is necessary before the appropriate regulatory bodies respond with restrictions on the use of mercury-leaking dental amalgam fillings?"

*Alzheimer's diseased brain has been shown to contain dysfunctional tubulin, creatine kinase and glutamine synthetase, hyperphosphorylated tau, low levels of reduced glutathione, elevated amyloid protein and neurofibrillar tangles.

This study confirms the role that dental mercury from amalgam fillings plays in the development of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Although the American, Canadian, and Alberta Dental Association would like to have you believe otherwise, science has clearly demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between brain mercury levels and the number and surfaces of "mercury/silver" amalgam dental fillings. The mercury levels that caused the devastating damage to nerve cells in the above referenced study were 100 to 1000 times those found in the brains of people with "mercury/silver" amalgam dental fillings.

In 1997, researchers at the University of Calgary Medical School and the College of Pharmacy at the University of Kentucky clearly demonstrated that exposing rats to the same levels of mercury vapor that can be released from "mercury/silver" amalgam dental fillings caused the mercury to interact with brain tubulin and disassemble microtubles that maintain neurite structure. The identical neurochemical lesion of similar or greater magnitude is evident in Alzheimer brain homogenates from approximately 80% of patients, when compared to human age-matched neurological controls. (Neurotoxicology 1997;18(2):315-324)

In 2000, researchers at the Neurobiology Laboratory, Psychiatric University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland using neuroblastoma cells exposed to mercury demonstrated an increase in production of amyloid protein that makes up the amyloid plaques as well as significantly increasing the phosphorylation of Tau protein. (J Neurochem 2000 Jan;74(1):231- 236)

Studies demonstrating a correlation between amalgam dental fillings and brain mercury levels: Lakartidningen 1986 Feb 12;83(7):519-522