Arizona State University researchers have received a new $465,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to expand on their research of how micro- and nanoplastics may accumulate in the aging human brain, and whether their presence is associated with Alzheimer’s disease
The project, led by Diego Mastroeni, an associate research professor at the Biodesign Institute’s ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center, will build directly on the findings from a $60,000 pilot grant the team received last October from the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium.
The earlier award allowed the team to address a more fundamental question first: whether microplastics could be reliably detected and measured in human brain tissue at all.
“We generated preliminary evidence that plastic-related signals can be detected in postmortem human brain samples, and that the amount present may differ between Alzheimer’s disease cases and matched cognitively unimpaired controls,” Mastroeni said. Those early results, along with what the team learned about analyzing the data accurately, gave them the evidence they needed to apply for NIH funding.
Expanding on the pilot program’s findings, researchers will analyze tissue from 100 brain autopsy cases, evenly split between people who had moderate-to-severe Alzheimer’s and cognitively unimpaired controls, drawing on samples from the Arizona Study of Aging and Neurodegenerative Disorders and the Brain and Body Donation Program.
The team will focus on two brain regions: the olfactory bulb, a possible entry point for particles inhaled through the nose, and the middle temporal gyrus, a region of the brain closely linked to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss.
With a larger sample size, Mastroeni said, the team can account for factors such as age, sex, genetics and tissue quality, and start to determine whether the patterns they observed are reproducible rather than the result of a small number of cases. The researchers will also examine whether people who lived in more disadvantaged neighborhoods, based on residential histories and measures such as the Area Deprivation Index, have higher levels of plastic in their brain tissue.
The expanded project will also allow researchers to examine whether plastic accumulation relates to the characteristic brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease (such as plaques and tangles), rather than simply determining whether the plastic particles are present.
Measuring plastic particles in brain tissue poses some challenges, partly because brain tissue is rich in fat, and some natural fat molecules can resemble common plastics, such as polyethylene, to certain detection methods.
Charles Rolsky, executive director of the Shaw Institute and a collaborator on the project, said his team is tackling that problem by cross-checking results across several different analytical techniques rather than relying on just one.
“We don’t want to mistake brain fat for plastic,” Rolsky said. “So, we break the tissue down carefully in the lab, then measure it multiple ways and compare the results against each other. That’s how we make sure what we’re reporting is real plastic, not a false signal.”
The study reunites the pilot program team: ASU, Banner Sun Health Research Institute, Shaw Institute, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and Rush University Medical Center.
Mastroeni said either outcome of the study would be valuable. Finding a link between plastic buildup and Alzheimer’s wouldn’t prove plastics cause the disease, he said, but would justify further research into the relationship between the two. An absence of a link would also be helpful, since it would lead to defining “the boundaries of the field and prevent overinterpretation of detection findings alone.”
Long term, the research team views the study as a step toward determining whether everyday plastic exposure belongs among the environmental factors, alongside genetics and lifestyle, that influence brain health over the course of a lifetime. Evidence of a meaningful connection could inform future research into prevention and exposure reduction. A null result would still advance the field by clarifying which questions deserve further study and research.
“Right now, simply finding plastics in human tissue is not enough,” Mastroeni said. “Understanding whether those exposures have meaningful consequences will be essential to defining the environmental determinants of health in the 21st century.”
By Rithwik Kalale |
August 05, 2026
SOURCE: https://news.asu.edu/b/20260805-new-nih-grant-fund-asu-study-microplastics-alzheimers-disease