Category Archives: News

Facebook app lets you experience Alzheimer’s

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Alzheimer’s is quite the scary disease. You start losing your memory but you aren’t aware that you are. The toll it takes on your family members can be quite draining as they watch you suffer. If you’ve watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes, you’ll probably understand the disease thanks to the excellent performance by John Lithgow.

Thanks to a new app called Sort Me Out from digital agency Grey Singapore that’s developed in conjunction with the Alzheimer’s Disease Association (ADA) Singapore, you can now experience what it feels like to have Alzheimer’s.

Read all about it HERE

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Alzheimer’s path found by Columbia researchers

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Columbia University researchers have made a surprising discovery about how Alzheimer’s disease appears to spread in the brain, a finding that could one day lead to early treatment for the memory-robbing disease.

The researcher’s findings – published last week in the journal PLoS One – answered a question that had stumped scientists for 25 years: does Alzheimer’s pop up independently in different parts of the brain or does it spread in a predictable pattern from one specific place in the brain to another.

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Alzheimer’s Families Clamor for Drug

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In the wake of research suggesting a skin-cancer drug may have benefits in treating Alzheimer’s disease, physicians and advocacy groups are getting a flurry of calls from patients seeking to use the drug off-label.

The clamor underscores how urgently patients want solutions to the rising tide of Alzheimer’s. But experts caution that more research is needed to determine whether the drug, bexarotene, is effective in humans at all, not to mention what the dosage should be.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, was conducted in mice, and the road to an effective Alzheimer’s treatment is littered with failures that looked promising early on in animals.

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3 Million More Americans Should Get Diagnosis, Study Concludes

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Three million Americans living with mild cognitive impairment should be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a tweak in terminology that could shed light on the condition’s cause and prepare patients for an inevitable decline, according to a new report.

The criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease were revised last year, placing more people in a category called mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, which is often a precursor to Alzheimer’s.

The new criteria detail three stages of Alzheimer’s disease: preclinical (before outward symptoms are visible); mild cognitive impairment (mild memory and thinking changes enough to be noticed but not debilitating); and dementia, or full-on Alzheimer’s disease.

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US wants effective Alzheimer’s treatment by 2025

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The Obama administration is developing the first National Alzheimer’s Plan to find better treatments for the disease and offer better day-to-day care for those afflicted.

A newly released draft of the overall goals sets the 2025 deadline, but doesn’t provide details of how to fund the necessary research to meet that target date. Today’s treatments only temporarily ease some dementia symptoms, and work to find better ones has been frustratingly slow.

A committee of Alzheimer’s experts begins a two-day meeting Tuesday to help advise the government on how to finalize the plan.

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GPS shoes help Alzheimer’s patients, caretakers

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It’s very common for people who have dementia to wander off on their own.

When that happens, frantic family members have to search for them, and call the police if they can’t find them.

But there’s now another option.

Technology — in the form of shoes that have GPS tracking — is beginning to revolutionize how caretakers keep tabs on their loved ones who sometimes wander.

Joann Johnston, whose husband, Bill Johnston, has Alzheimer’s disease, said the shoes give her peace of mind. “When I lost him, you, you kind of panic,” she said.

“I had been leaving him and going to the bank and say, ‘OK, go in, drink your tea and wait for me, and I will come back.’ And he would do that,” Joann Johnston explained. “(But one time) I spent a little longer in the grocery store and got back maybe 45 minutes later, and I looked in McDonald’s and he wasn’t there. I opened the bathroom door and hollered ‘Bill.’ No answer.”

Read all about it HERE