Recent advances in brain cholesterol dynamics: Transport, domains, and Alzheimer's disease

Major advances in understanding cholesterol dynamics and the role that chol esterol plays in vascular disease have recently been made. The brain is an organ that is highly enriched in cholesterol, but progress toward understan ding brain cholesterol dynamics has been relatively limited. This review ex amines recent contributions to the understanding of brain cholesterol dynam ics, focusing on extracellular and intracellular lipid carrier proteins, me mbrane cholesterol domains, and emerging evidence linking an association be tween cholesterol dynamics and Alzheimer's disease.