Review Volume 12, Issue 16 pp 16647—16662
ATP synthase and Alzheimer’s disease: putting a spin on the mitochondrial hypothesis
- 1 School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington LE12 5RD, UK
- 2 MRC Versus Arthritis Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research, Chesterfield, UK
Received: June 4, 2020 Accepted: July 21, 2020 Published: August 27, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103867How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Ebanks et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
It is estimated that over 44 million people across the globe have dementia, and half of these cases are believed to be Alzheimer’s disease (AD). As the proportion of the global population which is over the age 60 increases so will the number of individuals living with AD. This will result in ever-increasing demands on healthcare systems and the economy. AD can be either sporadic or familial, but both present with similar pathobiology and symptoms. Three prominent theories about the cause of AD are the amyloid, tau and mitochondrial hypotheses. The mitochondrial hypothesis focuses on mitochondrial dysfunction in AD, however little attention has been given to the potential dysfunction of the mitochondrial ATP synthase in AD. ATP synthase is a proton pump which harnesses the chemical potential energy of the proton gradient across the inner mitochondrial membrane (IMM), generated by the electron transport chain (ETC), in order to produce the cellular energy currency ATP. This review presents the evidence accumulated so far that demonstrates dysfunction of ATP synthase in AD, before highlighting two potential pharmacological interventions which may modulate ATP synthase.