Feature Channels: Alzheimer's and Dementia

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University of Utah Team creates startup company and secures $125,000 grant to provide personalized Alzheimer's care and address caregiver education shortage via mobile devices.

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A new UCLA study has assessed the prevalence of study partner “types,” whether it’s a spouse, adult child, or “other,” and has found who the study partner is can affect the patient’s outcome in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials.

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People taking the blood pressure drugs called beta blockers may be less likely to have changes in the brain that can be signs of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 16 to 23, 2013.

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Planning to cover dementia research this year? Before the 12 Days of Christmas are over, bone up on the most compelling research trends of 2012 by reading Alzforum’s roundup. It covers everything from surprising gene discoveries to drug trial results and points out some of the big stories to watch for in 2013.

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Some brain changes that are found in adults with common gene variants linked to disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and autism can also be seen in the brain scans of newborns, a study by UNC School of Medicine researchers finds.

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People who study or treat Alzheimer’s disease and its earliest clinical stage, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), have focused attention on the obvious short-term memory problems. But a new study suggests that people on the road to Alzheimer’s may actually have problems early on in processing semantic or knowledge-based information, which could have much broader implications for how patients function in their lives.

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A new way to use MRI scans may help determine whether dementia is Alzheimer’s disease or another type of dementia, according to new research published in the December 26, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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A new study focusing on how people with dementia become lost while driving, how missing drivers are found, and the role of public notification systems like Silver Alert in these discoveries suggests techniques that may help recover drivers with dementia and prevent potentially harmful incidents.

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A new study suggests that people without a spouse are represented less in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials compared to people with spouses. The study is published in the December 19, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine in November surgically implanted a pacemaker-like device into the brain of a patient in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, the first such operation in the United States. The device, which provides deep brain stimulation and has been used in thousands of people with Parkinson’s disease, is seen as a possible means of boosting memory and reversing cognitive decline.

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Take a look inside the brains of many soldiers, football players, and boxers, and you’ll find shrinking structures and massive, spreading pathology. Scientists now realize the pattern looks different from any known neurodegenerative disease. A fledgling scientific field has sprung up around these findings and is hurrying to identify, study, and prevent this newly described disease. Special coverage from Alzforum, a respected news source on Alzheimer’s and related diseases, details their latest efforts.

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A test to detect brain amyloid deposits associated with Alzheimer disease (AD) provides doctors with useful information on treatment and further testing for patients with cognitive impairment, according to a study published online by the journal Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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Many of dementia’s behavioral symptoms can be managed well without medications.

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Potential Alzheimer’s disease drugs have performed poorly in clinical trials with no sign of any new approvals on the horizon. Have scientists reached a therapeutic dead end? Not according to the 5th Clinical Trials in Alzheimer’s Disease conference, held 29-31 October in Monaco. Researchers revealed benefit from new data, suggesting some of those therapies may still prove useful. To read about the latest trial trends, check out the seven-part series from the Alzheimer Research Forum Alzforum, a well-respected news source on Alzheimer’s and related diseases.

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Researchers at UT-Austin are conducting new research on vascular disease and low-light therapy to prevent and reverse dementia before it sets into the brain.

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A gene so powerful it nearly triples the risk of Alzheimer’s disease has been discovered by an international team including researchers from Mayo Clinic. It is the most potent genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s identified in the past 20 years.

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Care providers feel unprepared to give the hard truth, a new study finds.

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Researchers have developed a transgenic mouse that carries a human gene known to increase risk of Alzheimer's 15-fold. The new mouse, which mimics the genetics of the human disease more closely than any existing model, provides new evidence for the earliest cause of Alzheimer's and may prove more useful in the development of drugs to prevent or treat the disease.

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Growing evidence suggests that there may be a link between diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, but the physiological mechanisms by which diabetes impacts brain function and cognition are not fully understood. In a new study published in Aging Cell, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies show, for the first time, that diabetes enhances the development of aging features that may underlie early pathological events in Alzheimer's.

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Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a key difference in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease and those who are cognitively normal but still have brain plaques that characterize this type of dementia.

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A link has been discovered between Alzheimer’s disease and the activity level of protein eIF2alpha. Prof. Kobi Rosenblum, U of Haifa: "Altering the performance of this protein via drug via drug therapy could constitute a treatment for Alzheimer’s."

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Two pharma companies have agreed to donate three investigational drugs to test in people who are destined by genetics to develop early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

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People 70 and older who eat food high in carbohydrates have nearly four times the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, and the danger also rises with a diet heavy in sugar, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Those who consume a lot of protein and fat relative to carbohydrates are less likely to become cognitively impaired, the study found. The findings are published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

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A new study shows that having a high amount of beta amyloid or “plaques” in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease may cause steeper memory decline in mentally healthy older people than does having the APOE ɛ4 allele, also associated with the disease. The study is published in the October 16, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Leading scientists have selected the first drugs to be evaluated in a worldwide clinical study to determine whether they can prevent Alzheimer’s disease. The pioneering trial is expected to start by early 2013.

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UCLA researchers have for the first time measured the activity of a brain region known to be involved in learning, memory and Alzheimer’s disease during sleep. They discovered that this part of the brain behaves as if it’s remembering something, even under anesthesia.

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Research shows that managing and treating vascular disease risk factors are not only beneficial to preventing heart disease and stroke, but also common forms of dementia.

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You’ve heard the tale before: Scientists can treat diseases like Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s in mice, but when those same drugs get to human trials, they fail. Can researchers come up with mice that better mimic the patient? In the case of Lou Gehrig’s, some of the latest mice have a problem: they die not because of their spinal nerve disease, but due to blockage of their gut, reports Alzforum, the leading news source on Alzheimer’s and related disease research.

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The FDA recently approved a positron emission tomography tracer for imaging amyloid plaques in the brain. But who will pay for these expensive scans, and who will they benefit? The lobbying has begun...

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Against a backdrop of failed clinical trials and looming epidemic, people are wondering if anything can be done to stop or slow down Alzheimer’s disease. A large European initiative has begun to test if lifestyle interventions can prevent dementia.

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A small company with roots in Singapore and Scotland plans to test a relatively unknown compound in clinical trials for a type of dementia that strongly affects behavior.

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Georgia Tech researchers have created a tool that allows adults to screen themselves for early signs of dementia. The home-based computer software is patterned after the paper-and-pencil Clock Drawing Test, one of health care’s most commonly used screening exams for cognitive impairment.

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Low serum levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) are associated with Alzheimer’s Disease in men, but not women, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

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A new study from Georgia Tech and the University of Toronto suggests that memory impairments for people diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s disease may be due, in part, to problems in determining the differences between similar objects. The findings also support growing research indicating that a part of the brain once believed to support memory exclusively – the medial temporal lobe - also plays a role in object perception. The results are published in the October edition of Hippocampus.

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A new UCLA study reveals the physical mechanisms that allow chemical agents to bind to proteins that lead to Alzheimer's disease in the brain.

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The results from a new study by neurological researchers from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center suggest that people who were emotionally neglected as children may have a higher risk of stroke in later adulthood.

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Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have taken one of the first detailed looks into how Alzheimer’s disease disrupts coordination among several of the brain’s networks.

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An enzyme that could represent a powerful new tool for combating Alzheimer’s disease has been discovered by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida.

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Surgery causes a lasting increase in Alzheimer’s pathology in AD mice, via transient activation of brain inflammation. There was a clear and persistent decrement in learning and memory caused by surgery as compared with inhalational anesthesia – but only in the context of a brain made vulnerable by human Alzheimer-associated transgenes.

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This week, a strategic roadmap to help to the nation’s health care system cope with the impending public health crisis caused Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia will be published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. The plan aims to link the latest scientific findings with clinical care and bring together patients, families, scientists, pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies, and advocacy organizations behind a common set of prioritized goals. The consensus document is the outcome of a June meeting of leading Alzheimer's researchers, advocates and clinicians, who gathered as part of the Marian S. Ware Alzheimer Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

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New research shows that professional football players may be at a higher risk of death from diseases that damage the cells in the brain, such as Alzheimer’s disease and ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), compared to the general U.S. population. The study is published in the September 5, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Sleep disruptions may be among the earliest indicators of Alzheimer’s disease, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report Sept. 5 in Science Translational Medicine.

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Scientists have found that eliminating an enzyme from mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease leads to a 90 percent reduction in the compounds responsible for formation of the plaques linked to this form of dementia.

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People whose blood sugar is on the high end of the normal range may be at greater risk of brain shrinkage that occurs with aging and diseases such as dementia, according to new research published in the September 4, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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People who are obese and also have high blood pressure and other risk factors called metabolic abnormalities may experience a faster decline in their cognitive skills over time than others, according to a study published in the August 21, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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People who are free of dementia and have high levels of a protein that indicates the presence of inflammation have relatives who are more likely to avoid the disease as well, according to a new study published in the August 15, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Latrepirdine, which failed in U. S. Clinical trials of alzheimer’s disease, is showing new potential in an animal model.

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UCLA researchers found that older adults who regularly used a brain fitness program played on a computer demonstrated significantly improved memory and language skills.

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The greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is advancing age. By age 85, the likelihood of developing the dreaded neurological disorder is roughly 50 percent. But researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say AD hits hardest among the “younger elderly” – people in their 60s and 70s – who show faster rates of brain tissue loss and cognitive decline than AD patients 80 years and older.

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The physical benefits of the Olympic sports are pretty obvious: strength, endurance and agility, to name a few. But did you know they also can help the brain? Mayo Clinic research shows that any exercise that gets the heart pumping may reduce the risk of dementia and mild cognitive impairment -- and slow those conditions if they start. Aerobic exercise also can boost your mood.