Feature Channels: Alzheimer's and Dementia

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High blood pressure in middle age can lead to impaired cognition and is a potential risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

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An experimental drug shows promise in treating Alzheimer’s disease by preventing inflammation and removing abnormal protein clumps in the brain that are associated with the disease, suggests a study in mice presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2016 annual meeting.

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Carol White can’t help but worry when she misplaces keys or can’t recall a name ever since relatives have been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.

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MINNEAPOLIS – Exercise may be associated with a small benefit for elderly people who already have memory and thinking problems, according to new research published in the October 19, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, a medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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A key strategy missing from the ambitious Alzheimer’s disease plan signed into law by President Obama six years ago could send investigational drugs down a precarious pipeline, argue two physicians.

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University of Adelaide researchers have developed a world-first optical sensor that can detect vitamin B12 in diluted human blood – a first step towards a low-cost, portable, broadscale vitamin B12 deficiency test. Vitamin B12 deficiency is associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

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A rare variant in the TM2D3 gene linked to increased risk and earlier onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Androgen Deprivation Therapy, a common hormone therapy to treat prostate cancer, may double a man’s risk of dementia, regardless of his age, Penn Medicine researchers reported.

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have confirmed that mutation-caused dysfunction in a process cells use to transport molecules within the cell plays a previously suspected but underappreciated role in promoting the heritable form of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but also one that might be remedied with existing therapeutic enzyme inhibitors.

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Researchers behind a new online game are inviting members of the public to look under a virtual microscope and contribute directly to Alzheimer’s disease research at Cornell University.

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In what the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has described as a pioneering effort, a research team at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Jacksonville, Florida, has made public a treasure trove of data aimed at accelerating development of therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.

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Researchers have prevented the development of Alzheimer's disease in mice by using a virus to deliver a specific gene into the brain.

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Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? That’s the question concerning University of California, Irvine scientists probing a phenomenon called “space brain.” UCI’s Charles Limoli and colleagues found that exposure to highly energetic charged particles – much like those found in the galactic cosmic rays that will bombard astronauts during extended spaceflights – causes significant long-term brain damage in test rodents, resulting in cognitive impairments and dementia.

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A new tool developed at Berkeley Lab allows researchers to interactively explore the hierarchical processes that happen in the brain when it is resting or performing tasks. Scientists also hope that the tool can shed some light on how neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s spread throughout the brain.

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Research has revealed that exposure to bacterial proteins called amyloid that have structural similarity to brain proteins may lead to an increase in clumping of proteins in the brain. Aggregates of misfolded amyloid proteins are seen in the brains of patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

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Women may have better verbal memory skills than men even when their brains show the same level of problems metabolizing glucose, which occurs in people with Alzheimer’s disease, according to research published in the October 5, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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How do you know when it's time for an older adult with mild dementia to stop driving? Dementia is a general term for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life. It can impact a person's ability to drive safely. Although all people with dementia will have to stop driving eventually, each case can be unique based on the individual. According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, we still need to explore mental or physical tests that can best predict when people with dementia should stop driving.

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Sue Griffin, Ph.D., an internationally known Alzheimer’s disease researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), leads a team that has received a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the causes and possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

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A protein linked to higher risk of Alzheimer’s can be removed from the brains of mice without hindering memory and learning, according to a study that addresses whether potential therapeutics targeting this protein would have detrimental side effects.

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A paper recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience by Donna Wilcock, PhD, of the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, reports that a certain form of immunotherapy targeted to Alzheimer's patients may be ineffective when that patient also has VCID.

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A recently-recognized pathologic protein in the brain may play a larger role in the development of clinical Alzheimer’s disease dementia than previously recognized, according to a study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. The findings of the study of nearly 1,000 older adults were published in the Sept. 30 issue of the journal, Brain.

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The Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) announces a $2.1 million grant awarded to R. Scott Turner, MD, PhD, of Georgetown University Medical Center to conduct a phase II clinical trial of low-dose nilotinib (marketed as Tasigna® for use as a cancer therapy) in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

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Georgetown University Medical Center today announces the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has completed its review of an investigational new drug application (IND) for the use of nilotinib in a phase II clinical trial for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

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Comprehensive occupational therapy care requires a family-centered approach including treatment for the person with dementia and education for the caregiver. Clinical assessments exist to evaluate the capabilities of a person with dementia, but until now, occupational therapists did not have a validated instrument to gain understanding of the caregiver’s perceptions of the person with dementia’s abilities. Occupational therapist researchers at the Jefferson College of Health Professions at Thomas Jefferson University developed a first-of-its-kind tool to close this gap and published their findings in OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health.

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The Lewy Body Dementia Association (LBDA) announced a new white paper that explores the state of the science for the most misdiagnosed form of dementia. The white paper was developed to create an awareness that there are increasing research opportunities to gain critical insights into LBD.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center a grant worth an estimated $8.7 million over five years for the establishment of a new center for research into Alzheimer’s disease.

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To drive awareness of a common but little-known dementia, Lewy body dementia (LBD), the Lewy Body Dementia Association and families across the nation stand together in solidarity, making October, Lewy Body Awareness Month.

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The gut may play a key role in preventing the onset of Parkinson's disease. UI biologists found that in roundworms, an immune response from intestinal cells sparks a series of chemical signals that ultimately preserves neurons whose death is associated with Parkinson's. The results appear in the journal Cell Reports.

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EL PASO, Texas - Certain symptoms associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease, including agitation and depression, affect Hispanics more frequently and severely than other ethnicities. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience (JNCN), suggest that Alzheimer’s disease manifests itself differently in Hispanic populations.

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Everyone knows that tobacco products are bad for your health. However, according to research at Texas A&M, it turns out the nicotine itself—when given independently from tobacco—could help protect the brain as it ages, and even ward off Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.

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A team at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC), based at Imperial College London, has found an important part of the machinery that switches on a gene known to protect against Alzheimer’s Disease.

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New research from Washington University in St. Louis shows that the protein behind Alzheimer’s disease shape-shifts, changing its internal structure in order to infiltrate brain cells and become toxic.

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Wayne State University has received a $3.6 million grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health for a project that will advance knowledge of brain aging, its relation to cognitive performance and the role of common vascular and metabolic risk factors in shaping the trajectories of aging. The funded project extends the longitudinal study of healthy volunteers from the metro Detroit area.

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Medicinal chemist and pharmacologist Daniel Martin Watterson, PhD, has been named the second annual winner of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation’s (ADDF) Melvin R. Goodes Prize for Excellence in Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery. The prize is the first to specifically recognize researchers working in promising areas of drug discovery for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Dr. Watterson is the John G. Searle Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Professor of Pharmacology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He also serves in an advisory role to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

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As researchers seek cognitively normal people on the way to Alzheimer’s to fill clinical prevention trials, they face the delicate task of disclosing a highly elevated, but not certain, risk of developing the disease to thousands of people. Scientists look to cancer research for cues as they recruit for the first of such trials.

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Wearable sensing device tracks movements, ambient environment, bio-signals and more.

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Missouri S&T researchers create chair that detects daily behavior and mental state of elderly patients or those subject to dementia.

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New research published by the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring confirms the connection between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and cognitive impairment - in this case, among those who helped with search, rescue and cleanup efforts following the 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) attacks.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. (Aug. 29, 2016) - Vesicles, fluid-filled sacs that brain cells make to trap amyloid, a hallmark of Alzheimer's, appear to also contribute to the disease, scientists report.

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Using a new mouse model, researchers have found that stiffer arteries can also negatively affect memory and other critical brain processes. The findings, which may eventually reveal how arterial stiffness leads to Alzheimer’s and other diseases involving dementia, will be presented at the American Physiological Society’s Inflammation, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease conference.

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A briefing featuring short presentations on key data shared at the 5th International Symposium on Focused Ultrasound. Experts will highlight clinical outcomes and advances in the use of focused ultrasound – a non-invasive therapeutic technology – to treat brain disorders, cancers, pain and hypertension. A Q&A and opportunity for interviews will follow.

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Neurons in the brain interact by sending each other chemical messages, so-called neurotransmitters. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the most common inhibitory neurotransmitter, which is important to restrain neural activity, preventing neurons from getting too trigger-happy and from firing too much or responding to irrelevant stimuli.

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At a recent event at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, members of the Memory Café, a program created by the Penn Memory Center exclusively for patients with memory problems, sat around four tables, each with Egyptian artifacts as its centerpiece. Museum educators went from table to table explaining – in a highly entertaining fashion – what each artifact signified in ancient times.

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The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network is churning out serial data on how Alzheimer’s disease develops in a given person over many years, and at the same time transforming how therapeutic trials are being done on this disease.

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Alzforum reports some of the major highlights from the recent Keystone symposium on the role of microglia in neurodegenerative disease.

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According to a new study, calcium supplements may be associated with an increased risk of dementia in older women who have had a stroke or other signs of cerebrovascular disease. The research is published in the August 17, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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A study by researchers at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior has found that a healthy diet, regular physical activity and a normal body mass index can reduce the incidence of protein build-ups that are associated with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. In the study, 44 adults ranging in age from 40 to 85 (mean age: 62.6) with mild memory changes but no dementia underwent an experimental type of PET scan to measure the level of plaque and tangles in the brain. Researchers also collected information on participants’ body mass index, levels of physical activity, diet and other lifestyle factors. Plaque, deposits of a toxic protein called beta-amyloid in the spaces between nerve cells in the brain; and tangles, knotted threads of the tau protein found within brain cells, are considered the key indicators of Alzheimer’s.

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Synapses are the power junctions that allow living creatures to function. Popularly associated with learning and memory, they play a more fundamental role in our existence by regulating everything from breathing, sleeping and waking and other bodily functions.

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In the past year, the Global Alzheimer’s Platform and the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia have moved quickly, and jointly, to pave the way toward more, faster, cheaper trials. Will they be better, too?