The importance of sHSPs in disease was originally noted from the observations that HSPB1 and CRYAB were overexpressed in AD brains (Shinohara et al., 1993; Renkawek et al., 1994a, ,b) and HSPB1, CRYAB, HSPB6 and HSPB8 were associated with AD plaques (Shao et al., 2012). Here, HSPB1 is linked to Alzheimer disease.