To find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, we need to understand how and where it gets started, and new research suggests we might be looking in the wrong place.

Scientists from the US and Germany have linked genetic risk for Alzheimer's and other brain diseases to the blood-brain barrier – the blood vessels and immune cells that surround and protect the brain.

While Alzheimer's is closely associated with abnormal clumps and tangles of proteins damaging neurons inside the brain, their findings suggest the initial trigger for the disease could be an outside intruder slipping through a compromised brain boundary.

"When studying diseases affecting the brain, most research has focused on its resident neurons," says neuroscientist Andrew Yang, from the Gladstone Institute of Neurologica

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