The Brain: Alzheimer's and dementia news and discussions

weatheriscool
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New study identifies how memory of personal interactions declines with age
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09- ... s-age.html
by University of Maryland School of Medicine
One of the most upsetting aspects of age-related memory decline is not being able to remember the face that accompanies the name of a person you just talked with hours earlier. While researchers don't understand why this dysfunction occurs, a new study conducted at University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) has provided some important new clues. The study was published on September 8 in Aging Cell.

Using aging mice, researchers have identified a new mechanism in neurons that causes memories associated with these social interactions to decline with age. In addition, they were able to reverse this memory loss in the lab.

The researchers report that their findings identified a specific target in the brain that may one day be used to develop therapies that could prevent or reverse memory loss due to typical aging. Aging memory problems are distinct from those caused by diseases like Alzheimer's or dementia. At this time, there are no medications that can prevent or reverse cognitive decline due to typical aging.

"If an older adult attends a cocktail party, afterwards they would most likely recognize the names or the faces of the other attendees, but they might struggle with remembering which name went with which face," said the study leader Michy Kelly, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at UMSOM.
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Exercise hormone halts Parkinson's disease symptoms in mouse study
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09- ... ptoms.html
by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have shown that a hormone secreted into the blood during endurance, or aerobic, exercise reduces levels of a protein linked to Parkinson's disease and halts movement problems in mice.

Parkinson's disease, a neurologic condition that causes people to lose control over their muscles and movements, affects about 1 million people in the U.S.

If confirmed in additional laboratory research and clinical trials, the researchers' study in mice engineered to have Parkinson's disease symptoms could pave the way for a Parkinson's disease therapy based on the hormone irisin.

Results of the researchers' tests appeared Aug. 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Repeated infections associated with increased risk of some neurodegenerative diseases
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09- ... eases.html
by Public Library of Science

Infections treated with specialty hospital care in early- and mid-life are associated with an increased subsequent risk of Alzheimer's (AD) and Parkinson's diseases (PD), but not amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a new study publishing September 15 in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Jiangwei Sun of Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and colleagues.

Experimental studies in animals have suggested that infection plays a role in the development of some neurodegenerative diseases, but supporting evidence in humans is limited. In the new study, researchers used data on people diagnosed with AD, PD or ALS from 1970–2016 in Sweden, as well as five matched controls per case, all identified from the Swedish National Patient Register. The analysis included 291,941 AD cases, 103,919 PD cases and 10,161 ALS cases.

A hospital-treated infection five or more years before diagnosis was associated with a 16% higher risk of AD (95%CI: 1.15–1.18, P < 0.001) and a 4% higher risk of PD (95%CI: 1.02–1.06, P < 0.001), with similar risks seen for bacterial, viral and other infections and for different sites of infection. The highest risk of disease was seen in people with multiple hospital-treated infections before the age of 40, with more than double the risk of AD (OR=2.62, 95%CI: 2.52–2.72, P < 0.001) and more than 40% increase in the risk of PD (OR=1.41, 95%CI: 1.29–1.53, 3 44 P < 0.001). No association was observed for ALS, regardless of age at diagnosis.
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In-home wireless device tracks disease progression in Parkinson's patients
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09- ... sease.html
by Adam Zewe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Parkinson's disease is the fastest-growing neurodegenerative disease, now affecting more than 10 million people worldwide, yet clinicians still face huge challenges in tracking its severity and progression.

Clinicians typically evaluate patients by testing their motor skills and cognitive functions during clinic visits. These semisubjective measurements are often skewed by outside factors—perhaps a patient is tired after a long drive to the hospital. More than 40 percent of individuals with Parkinson's are never treated by a neurologist or Parkinson's specialist, often because they live too far from an urban center or have difficulty traveling.

In an effort to address these problems, researchers from MIT and elsewhere demonstrated an in-home device that can monitor a patient's movement and gait speed, which can be used to evaluate Parkinson's severity, the progression of the disease, and the patient's response to medication.
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Pigs with gene defect provide new perspectives for the treatment of Alzheimer's
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09- ... tment.html
by Aarhus University
For decades, researchers from all over the world have been working hard to understand Alzheimer's disease. Now, a collaboration between the Department of Biomedicine and the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University has resulted in a flock of minipigs that could lead to a major step forward in the research and treatment of Alzheimer's.

The cloned pigs were born with a mutation in the gene SORL1, which is interesting because the mutations are found in up to 2-3% of all early onset Alzheimer's cases in human beings.

Due to the gene mutation, the pigs develop signs of Alzheimer's at a young age. This gives the researchers an opportunity to follow the early signs of the disease, as the pigs show changes in the same biomarkers that are used to make the diagnosis in humans.

"By following the changes over time in the pigs, we can better understand the earliest changes in the cells. Later, these changes lead to the irreversible alterations in the brain that are the cause of dementia. But now we can follow the pigs before they lose their memory, change their behavior, etc., which will make it possible to test new drugs that can be used at an early stage to prevent SORL1-associated Alzheimer's disease," says Associate Professor Olav Michael Andersen, who is the first author of the study, which has just been published in the scientific journal Cell Reports Medicine.
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Team develops behavioral test to detect early risk of Alzheimer's
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09- ... eimer.html
by Lori Dajose, California Institute of Technology
Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative condition that damages a person's ability to think, remember, and perform basic functions. According to the National Institutes of Health, Alzheimer's affects more than 6 million Americans, mostly ages 65 and older. Though the neurological damage from the disease is irreversible, early detection and intervention has been shown to slow its progression.

Before the onset of Alzheimer's physical symptoms, the most commonly used method to measure an individual's risk of developing the disease is through measuring levels of certain proteins, such as amyloid beta and tau proteins, in spinal fluid. This test is invasive, painful, and expensive.

Now, a team from Caltech and the Huntington Medical Research Institutes has made progress toward developing a simple behavioral test to measure an individual's risk of developing Alzheimer's before any symptoms arise. A paper describing the team's findings appears in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring on September 20.
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Alzheimer's drug shows promise in early results of study
Source: AP

By TOM MURPHY
Shares of Biogen and other drugmakers researching Alzheimer’s disease soared early Wednesday after Japan’s Eisai Co. said its potential treatment appeared to slow the fatal disease’s progress in a late-stage study.

Eisai announced results late Tuesday from a global study of nearly 1,800 people with early-stage Alzheimer’s.

The drugmaker said early results showed that its treatment, lecanemab, reduced patient clinical decline by 27% when compared to a placebo or fake drug after 18 months of the infused treatment. Patients were monitored using a scale that measures how they do in areas like memory, judgement, problem solving and personal care.

Eisai Co. Ltd. said it would discuss full results from the research at a conference in late November. It also plans to publish its findings in a peer-reviewed medical journal.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/health-2e513 ... osition_08
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Study: Decreased proteins, not amyloid plaques, are tied to Alzheimer's disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10- ... -tied.html
by University of Cincinnati
New research from the University of Cincinnati bolsters a hypothesis that Alzheimer's disease is caused by a decline in levels of a specific protein, contrary to a prevailing theory that has been recently called into question.

UC researchers led by Alberto Espay, MD, and Andrea Sturchio, MD, in collaboration with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, published the research on Oct. 4 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Questioning the dominant hypothesis

The research is focused on a protein called amyloid-beta. The protein normally carries out its functions in the brain in a form that is soluble, meaning dissolvable in water, but it sometimes hardens into clumps, known as amyloid plaques.

The conventional wisdom in the field of Alzheimer's research for more than 100 years stated that Alzheimer's was caused by the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain. But Espay and his colleagues hypothesized that plaques are simply a consequence of the levels of soluble amyloid-beta in the brain decreasing. These levels decrease because the normal protein, under situations of biological, metabolic or infectious stress, transforms into the abnormal amyloid plaques.
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Alzheimer's-slowing drug labelled historic


By James Gallagher
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63060019
Trial results of a drug appearing to slow Alzheimer's disease represent a "historic moment", experts say.

Pharmaceutical companies Eisai and Biogen have said their drug works when given in the early stages of the disease.

The full details have yet to published, but it appears to slow the pace of the brain's decline.

And even the limited data has generated excitement among dementia scientists and charities.
Mental agility

The drug, lecanemab, is designed to remove clumps of toxic beta-amyloid proteins that build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.

Dozens of other drug trials have failed, leading to questions about whether amyloid was really causing the disease.

In this trial, 1,795 volunteers in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease were injected with lecanemab every two weeks and regularly had their memory and mental agility tested.

The pace of cognitive decline had been reduced by 27% over the course of the 18-month trial, compared with people given a dummy, or placebo, treatment, the pharmaceutical companies said.

They also showed levels of the toxic protein were lowered in the brain.

Side-effects included brain swelling and headaches.

The drug will not work for other forms of dementia.
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