Studies by a research team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicate that a brain protein known as YKL-40 may link Alzheimer’s disease with dysfunction in circadian rhythms, suggesting that treatments that target the protein could slow course of the disease. Their work, reported in Science Translational Medicine, found that YKL-40 is both regulated by clock genes and involved in clearing away potentially toxic build-up of Alzheimer’s proteins in the brain.