Biogenic metallic elements in the human brain?
Open accessAbstract
in the human brain. These nanoscale biometal deposits were identified within amyloid plaque cores isolated from Alzheimer's disease subjects, using synchrotron x-ray spectromicroscopy. The surfaces of nanodeposits of metallic copper and iron are highly reactive, with distinctly different chemical and magnetic properties from their predominant oxide counterparts. The discovery of metals in their elemental form in the brain raises new questions regarding their generation and their role in neurochemistry, neurobiology, and the etiology of neurodegenerative disease.
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Aβ plaque deposition generates detectable local magnetic susceptibility variations.
“generating detectable local magnetic susceptibility variations.”
From Diffusion MRI reveals amyloid plaque–associated cellular signatures through spatial transcriptomic integration (2026) · cites this paper as [30]
The Results and Discussion section, under “Discovery of ferromagnetic elemental iron” (page not provided), reports local magnetic differences within an amyloid plaque: one iron-rich region showed strong XMCD contrast, while another showed no clear dichroism. This supports detectable local magnetic variation associated with plaques, but the paper does not establish that plaque deposition generates magnetic susceptibility variations or report a susceptibility measurement. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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References 78 · Cited by 94
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- [13]J. F. Collingwood, N. D. Telling, in Iron Oxides: From Nature to Applications, D. Faivre, Ed. (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2016).
- Authors
- Everett, J., Lermyte, F., Brooks, J., Tjendana-Tjhin, V., Plascencia-Villa, G., Hands-Portman, I., Donnelly, J. M., Billimoria, K., Perry, G., Zhu, X., Sadler, P. J., O’Connor, P. B., Collingwood, J. F., & Telling, N. D.
- Affiliations
- University of Warwick (GB)
- Technische Universität Darmstadt (DE)
- School of Engineering, Library Road, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
- Department of Biology and Neurosciences Institute, The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), San Antonio, TX 78249, USA.
- LGC (GB)
- The University of Texas at San Antonio (US)
- Case Western Reserve University (US)
- Keele University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Telling, Neil D.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Science Advances
- Published
- 2021-06-11
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 24
- ISSN
- 2375-2548 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8189590
- OpenAlex
- W3166223137
- Cited by
- 94
- References
- 78
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 5
- FWCI
- 10.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Science Advances (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Warwick Research Archive Portal (University of Warwick) (acceptedVersion)
- Keele Research Repository (Keele University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Alzheimer’s Association (AARFD-17-529742)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/N033140/1, EP/K035193/1, EP/N033191/1, EP/P030572/1, EP/N509796/1, EP/L015307/1)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Trace Elements in Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Neurological diseases and metabolism
- Keywords
- biometals, copper, metallic iron, amyloid plaques, Alzheimer's disease, human brain, neurodegeneration, metal reactivity
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