The influence of aging in one tauopathy: Alzheimer 's disease.

In this short review, the link between aging and the onset of Alzheimer 's disease is discussed. It has been widely suggested that aging is the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer 's disease,in which a failure in the insulin signal-transduction pathway could occur with age and, thereby, the assembly of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (two aberrant structures present in Alzheimer 's disease)could be promoted. The main component of neurofibrillary tangles is the microtubule-associated protein tau, and the assembly of tau protein appears to occur after its modification by phosphorylation. In this phosphorylation, some protein kinases related to the insulin-transduction pathway could play a role.