Feature Channels: Alzheimer's and Dementia

• share
• favorite_border

Ten years ago, on Jan. 23, 2012, the brand-new University of Kansas Clinical Research Center opened its doors.

• share
• favorite_border

A cost analysis of the controversial new Alzheimer’s disease drug aducanumab shows that ancillary care services account for nearly 20% of total Medicare costs related to the drug, or $6,564 per patient per year.

• share
• favorite_border

The latest research news from the Health Disparities Channel.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have determined the optimal number of intervention sessions needed to prevent cognitive decline in people at risk.

• share
• favorite_border

CLEVELAND: Cleveland Clinic has launched a landmark study to better understand why millions of people around the world suffer from brain diseases, with the goal of pinpointing disease biomarkers early, well before clinical symptoms present themselves. The new Cleveland Clinic Brain Study – the largest clinical study ever for brain disease – will collect data from up to 200,000 neurologically healthy individuals over a 20-year period to identify brain disease biomarkers and targets for preventing and curing neurological disorders.

• share
• favorite_border

Florida State University researchers have identified a link between two key parts of the brain that play significant roles in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and depression.Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Wen Li and psychology doctoral candidate Kevin Clancy found that stimulating the system in the brain that deals with attention and imagery also enhances the efficiency of what’s called the default mode network, a key part of the brain’s functional organization.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recently published studies in basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts. Current advances include an anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy to treat follicular lymphoma, targeted therapies for urothelial cancers and advanced breast cancers, understanding the tumor microenvironment and immune landscape in pancreatic cancer, a link between depression risk and androgen deprivation for prostate cancer, and the discovery of new therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s disease, liver cancer and aggressive breast cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

Following Medicare’s decision today about paying for a new Alzheimer’s disease treatment only in limited circumstances, Zaldy Tan, MD, MPH, a highly respected memory and geriatric medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai, is available to comment.

• share
• favorite_border

As 2022 gets underway, experts in the Cedars-Sinai Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery are monitoring new Alzheimer’s treatments, while also advancing Cedars-Sinai-led research in noninvasive diagnostic tools for the disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Increasing the expression of one gene in cells that assist the brain’s neurons protects neurons in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. These findings come from a new study published Jan. 10 in Nature Communications. High activity of the gene, Nrf2, slowed cognitive and physical decline in the mice and reduced the accumulation of sticky proteins in their brains, all key markers of the disease in humans.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team led by University of California, Irvine has discovered new neural circuits that regulate spatial learning and memory in the brain’s hippocampal formation. The team identified novel functional roles of new circuit connections between the venal CA1 region and dorsal CA3 regions of the hippocampus and demonstrated that genetic inactivation of this projection impairs object-related spatial learning and memory, but does not modulate anxiety-related behaviors.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

When elderly people stay active, their brains have more of a class of proteins that enhances the connections between neurons to maintain healthy cognition, a UC San Francisco study has found.

• share
• favorite_border

Mount Sinai researchers analyzed thousands of microglia from different brain regions of deceased patients who had been diagnosed with a variety of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Their results, published in Nature Genetics, support the idea that microglia may play critical roles in some cases of brain disease while also providing a potentially valuable guide for future studies.

• share
• favorite_border

There has yet been no plausible theory to explain Alzheimer's disease arising among Down syndrome young adults. A microbe is proposed for that role.

• share
• favorite_border

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is launching an international clinical trial aimed at preventing Alzheimer’s disease in people genetically destined to develop the illness at a young age. Unlike most other Alzheimer’s prevention trials, this one will enroll people before the disease has taken hold – up to 25 years before the expected onset of dementia.

• share
• favorite_border

Using new methodology, University of Kentucky researchers have mapped the variations in sugar chains attached to brain proteins from deceased healthy individuals or individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. Thus far, no effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are available. New approaches to preventing the progression of this devastating neurological disease are desperately needed.