New research has yielded the strongest evidence yet that irisin, a hormone discovered by Dana-Farber’s Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, that is produced in the body by muscular exercise, can by itself improve cognitive functions and potentially reverse some of the memory-destroying effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
Reporting in the journal Nature Metabolism, Spiegelman and co-authors from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) show in a series of animal experiments that irisin, which is released by muscles into the bloodstream following endurance exercise, reached a key area of the brain involved in memory and other mental processes and improved cognitive functions in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.
Irisin is a smaller portion of a protein called FN
