Feature Channels: Alzheimer's and Dementia

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Dr. Amy Hunter, a full-time faculty member and a part-time practitioner, is focused on improving the quality of care for older adults.

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The American Academy of Neurology and the American Brain Foundation are awarding an Illinois researcher the 2018 Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick’s, Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases for his work in dementia research. David A. Bennett, MD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and a member of the American Academy of Neurology, will be honored at the American Academy of Neurology’s 70th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, April 21-27, 2018.

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While there has been an increased focus on person-centered models of care transition for cognitively intact older adults from hospital to home, little is known about the core elements of successful transitions in care specifically for persons with dementia.

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Women with high physical fitness at middle age were nearly 90 percent less likely to develop dementia decades later, compared to women who were moderately fit, according to a study published the March 14, 2018, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study measured the women’s cardiovascular fitness based on an exercise test.

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African Americans with a common genetic variation are at increased risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease, while European Americans with the same variation are not, according to a study led by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. They published the study results in the February 22 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

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Dr. David Bennett has been awarded the 2018 Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick’s, Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases by the American Academy of Neurology and the American Brain Foundation. Sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of Alzheimer’s research, the Potamkin Prize is an internationally recognized tribute in the field.

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UCLA researchers engineered mice to produce more TREM2, a gene tied to Alzheimer’s disease

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As we get older, it’s not uncommon to experience “senior moments,” in which we forget where we parked our car or call our children by the wrong names. And we may wonder: Are these memory lapses a normal part of aging, or do they signal the early stages of a severe disorder such as Alzheimer’s disease? Currently, there’s no good way to tell.

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SBP researchers have revealed how TREM2, a receptor found on immune cells in the brain, interacts with toxic amyloid beta proteins to restore neurological function. The research suggests boosting TREM2 levels in the brain may prevent or reduce the severity of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease.

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A sizable percentage of elderly patients with blood-related cancers such as leukemia and multiple myeloma are apt to show signs of diminished cognitive functioning

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Researchers profiled the epigenomic landscape of Alzheimer’s brains, specifically in one of the regions affected early in AD, the lateral temporal lobe. They compared these to both younger and elderly cognitively normal control subjects. The team described the genome-wide enrichment of a chemical modification of histone proteins that regulates the compaction of chromosomes in the nucleus. Changes along the genome in disease versus normal aging brains may signify places for future drug development.

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For the first time, an international team of scientists, led by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, have determined that an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) polygenic risk score can be used to correctly identify adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who were only in their 50s. MCI is considered a precursor to AD.

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People with increasing total cholesterol aged 85 and older had a reduced risk for marked cognitive decline compared to people 75-84 whose risk was significantly elevated.

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People who suffer from insomnia could be cured of the dangerous sleep disorder by following a six-week, drug-free regimen recommended by a sleep physician at Virginia Mason Medical Center.

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Concussions and other traumatic brain injuries may increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease earlier in life, according to a study from UT Southwestern’s Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute.

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A strict gluten-free diet may help protect against the nerve pain that some people with gluten sensitivity experience, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 70th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, April 21 to 27, 2018.

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People whose eyes show signs of small changes in blood vessels at age 60 may be more likely to develop thinking and memory problems by the time they are 80 than people with healthy eyes, according to a study published in the February 28, 2018, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Hilary Van Horn, whose stepdad is suffering from Lewy body dementia, challenges everyone to make an "Earth Angel" in an awareness and fundraising campaign for the Penn Memory Center.

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A UAB study shows that a gene therapy approach can help neurons remove lipofuscin, or cellular debris, in mouse models for frontotemporal dementia. The study added a gene that encodes for the missing protein progranulin.

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Some people with a certain type of hearing loss may be more likely to also have the memory loss and thinking problems called mild cognitive impairment, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 70th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, April 21 to 27, 2018. Hearing loss is one of the most common disabilities in elderly people, affecting about one-third of people over age 65.

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A team of researchers from ORNL and the University of Alabama at Birmingham recently developed the antioxidant manganoporphyrin, a new polymer that could potentially improve drug delivery methods and other biomedical applications. Using neutrons, they studied the strength and efficiency of a compound made from this material and tannic acid, a natural antioxidant.

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The finding “opens up a whole new research area to look at neuroinflammation in the context of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” the lead researcher says. “But the clinical impact will be in many, many different areas.”

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Tears may hold clues to whether someone has Parkinson’s disease, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 70th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, April 21 to 27, 2018.

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A hypertonic grip expander for individuals with cerebral palsy and stroke patients, a chair for students on the autism spectrum, and an independent lifting device for quadriplegic individuals are the designs created by teams of undergraduate students from colleges and universities in the Northeast during the inaugural Engineering Innovation for Society (EIS—pronounced “ice”) student design competition.

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There’s a cause of dementia that can sometimes be reversed, but it’s often not diagnosed because the symptoms are so similar to those of other disorders. Now researchers say a simple walking test may be able to accurately diagnose the disease, according to a study published the February 21, 2018, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Fred A. Kobylarz, MD, associate professor of family medicine and community health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, is an expert in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and offers caregivers and family members information on diagnoses and symptoms, as well how to best improve the quality of life for their family member.

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For couples with decades of shared memories, a partner’s decline in the ability to communicate because of dementia is frightening and frustrating. Communication strategies they’ve used before simply don’t work anymore. By getting creative, an in-home intervention to support couples affected by dementia is showing that “practice does make perfect,” both for the caregiver and the care receiver or person with dementia, and can improve their communication behaviors in just 10 weeks.

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Axonal and dendritic proteins embedded in the membrane at either end – called transmembrane proteins – are built in the same cellular factory and travel on the same cellular highway. But for the cell to function property, they must be delivered to the correct domain. So how does the cell regulate that voyage?

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A therapeutic target to preserve vision in glaucoma patients could have treatment ramifications for age-related neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, according to findings released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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The pursuit of the usual suspect in Alzheimer's research may be distracting from a more direct culprit in the disease, according to a study that analyzed data from 51 published experiments. P-tau looked a good bit more culpable than amyloid-beta plaque.

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Aging or impaired brains can once again form lasting memories if an enzyme that applies the brakes too hard on a key gene is lifted, according to University of California, Irvine neurobiologists.

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How do you explain to a child that Grandpa or Grandma has Alzheimer’s disease?

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A drug used to slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease could offer clues on how drugs might one day be able to reverse brain changes that affect learning and memory in teens and young adults who binge drink.

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Scientists have more evidence that exercise improves brain health and could be a lifesaving ingredient that prevents Alzheimer’s disease.

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A team of researchers from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute have found that gradually depleting an enzyme called BACE1 completely reverses the formation of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s disease, thereby improving the animals’ cognitive function. The study, which will be published February 14 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, raises hopes that drugs targeting this enzyme will be able to successfully treat Alzheimer’s disease in humans.

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Higher levels of lifestyle physical activity – such as house cleaning, walking a dog and gardening, as well as exercise – are associated with more gray matter in the brains of older adults, according to a study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center.

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A pioneering glimpse at an enzyme inside elusive cell membranes elucidates a player in cell health but also in hepatitis C and in Alzheimer's. With neutron beams, researchers open a portal into the hidden world of intramembrane proteins, which a third of the human genome is required to create.

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Requiring physicians to report patients with dementia to state driver’s licensing authorities is not associated with fewer hospitalizations from motor vehicle crashes. However, in-person license renewal laws and vision testing dramatically cut crashes involving drivers with dementia.

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Stable, biocompatible microcapsules have gained a new power — the ability to scavenge reactive oxygen species. This may aid microcapsule survival in the body as the tiny polymer capsules carry a drug or other biomolecules, or find use in antioxidant therapy or industrial applications.

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Amyloid plaques have long been believed to be an indicator of neurodegenerative disease. But according to Raymond Anderson, a graduate student in West Virginia University's School of Medicine, such buildup alone does not correlate with disease severity. In fact, these buildups may even protect neurons.

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People with Alzheimer’s disease have disturbances in their internal body clocks that affect the sleep/wake cycle and may increase risk of developing the disorder. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that such circadian rhythm disruptions also occur much earlier in people whose memories are intact but whose brain scans show early, preclinical evidence of Alzheimer’s.

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A paper published today in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that solanezumab, a monoclonal antibody-based treatment for Alzheimer’s disease developed by Eli Lilly that targets amyloid plaques, did not significantly slow cognitive decline.

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New help may be on the way for people with dementia with Lewy bodies, which is the second most common neurodegenerative type of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. The disease can cause movement problems and issues such as hallucinations in addition to thinking and memory problems. But the drug used to treat the movement problems can also exacerbate the hallucinations, delusions and other psychiatric problems.

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New research from Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) reveals a novel gene regulatory system that may advance stem cell therapies and gene-targeting treatments for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and mental health disorders that affect cognitive abilities.

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Lab-grown human neurons will help researchers develop and test treatments for devastating diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

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Take twice daily, curcumin - found in turmeric - boosted memory by 28 percent in double-blind, placebo-controlled study

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New findings could change how iron metabolism in the human body is understood, and open new horizons for research and therapeutics for inflammatory diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's disease.

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