Avoiding Alzheimer’s disease: The important causative role of divalent copper ingestion

Abstract

In this review, we point out that developed countries are undergoing an epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease, not shared by undeveloped countries. We also point out that this epidemic is new, developing during the 20th century. This suggests that an environmental change occurring in the 20th century in developed countries is causing the epidemic. The author hypothesizes that the environmental change causing the epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease is ingestion of divalent copper. The hypothesis is based on data indicating that food copper is primarily monovalent copper, and humans evolved safe ways of channeling monovalent copper, but not divalent copper. Humans were not exposed to divalent copper until the 20th century, due to the use of copper plumbing and supplement pills containing copper, and that exposure, which occurs in developed countries, does not occur in undeveloped countries. Data in support of the hypothesis show that tiny amounts of divalent copper added to drinking water of Alzheimer’s disease animal models greatly enhance Alzheimer’s disease, and ingestion of copper (which is always divalent copper)-containing supplement pills by humans is quite toxic to cognition.

Impact statement

The work described in this review is very important to scientists working on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) because it reveals a cause for the explosive epidemic of this disease. It is also important to the public because it provides a method to avoid this newly revealed cause, and thereby avoid AD. The field is advanced because this review reveals new information about the mechanism of AD pathogenesis, namely copper, and specifically divalent copper, toxicity is important. New information about divalent copper toxicity in the brain affecting cognition is revealed. The field is impacted strongly because, in view of the frustrations that have occurred in treatment developed, now most AD can be prevented. This means the suffering of the patient, the prolonged and difficult care required by caregivers, and the enormous expenditures for this one disease, can now be avoided.