Scientists just watched Alzheimer’s damage happen in real time

Scientists at Oregon State University have captured something researchers have long struggled to see: the real-time chemical interactions that help drive Alzheimer’s disease. By watching how metal ions—especially copper—trigger harmful protein clumping in the brain, the team uncovered a clearer picture of how the disease develops at a molecular level.

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A new type of dementia is forcing doctors to rethink memory loss

Doctors are only just getting to grips with LATE – a newly recognised form of cognitive decline behind up to one in five dementia cases

When a parent or grandparent begins forgetting names, misplacing objects or repeating the same stories, the diagnosis most people expect is Alzheimer’s disease. For decades, Alzheimer’s has dominated public understanding of dementia, becoming almost shorthand for memory loss itself.

But that assumption is increasingly being challenged. Neurologists now know that a significant number of people with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms actually have a different condition altogether – one that most families, and even many doctors, have only recently heard of.

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Risk of Alzheimer Dementia After High-Dose vs Standard-Dose Influenza Vaccination

Previous studies, including large cohort analyses comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated adults, suggest that routine immunizations such as inactivated influenza vaccines (IIVs) may reduce Alzheimer dementia (AD) risk. Whether AD risk differs after high-dose IIV (H-IIV) vs standard-dose IIV (S-IIV) remains unexamined. We hypothesized that AD risk would be lower among adults ≥65 years after H-IIV compared with S-IIV.

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SuperAgers show unique cell signatures in the brain

An NIH-funded research team, led by Drs. Orly Lazarov and Jalees Rehman at the University of Illinois, Chicago, turned to the brains of cognitive SuperAgers for clues. SuperAgers were defined as people at least 80 years old with memory test scores as good as or better than those of people in their 50s and 60s. The team looked for molecular signatures unique to those with exceptional recall and memory.

The findings give us a better understanding of cognitive function in the human brain as we age. “Determining why some brains age more healthily than others can help researchers make therapeutics that will boost memory in aging and prevent Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia,” Lazarov says.

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