Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia in the world, affecting more than 26 million people. Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD), another affliction is far less common, but both conditions share many of the same qualities. They are fatal within a few years of diagnosis, they are incurable and they involved the crippling degeneration of the brain’s neurons. Now, a group of Yale researchers have discovered that the two diseases are also linked by a pair of critical proteins.

Look into the brain of someone with Alzheimer’s disease and you will see large, insoluble “plaques” sitting between nerve cells. They consist of a protein fragment (or “peptide”) called amyloid-beta, accumulating in its thousands. These plaques are a hallmark of the disease,