Category Archives: Research

New Drug Trial Aims To Prevent Alzheimer’s Before It Starts

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Researchers will test an experimental drug that could prevent Alzheimer’s disease in people who are genetically slated to develop Alzheimer’s disease but have yet to exhibit symptoms

As part of the National Alzheimer’s Plan, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a $16 million grant to Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Arizona to fund the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative (API), which will study whether a plaque-fighting treatment can prevent the disease. The trial will take place in Medellín, Colombia as well as select sites in North America. The majority of the study participants will come from an extended family of 5,000 people living in Medellín who are considered part of the world’s largest family affected by Alzheimer’s. The New York Times reports the family members have a specific genetic mutation that causes symptoms of cognitive impairment around age 45, then full dementia around age 51.

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Clock ticking with new plan to fight Alzheimer’s

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The clock is ticking: The first National Alzheimer’s Plan sets a deadline of 2025 to finally find effective ways to treat, or at least stall, the mind-destroying disease.

The Obama administration finalizes the landmark national strategy on Tuesday, laying out numerous steps the government and private partners can take over the coming years to fight what is poised to become a defining disease of the rapidly aging population.

But some of the work is beginning right away.

Starting Tuesday, embattled families and caregivers can check a new one-stop website — www.alzheimers.gov — for easy-to-understand information about dementia and where to get help in their own communities.

The National Institutes of Health is funding some major new studies of possible therapies, including a form of insulin that’s squirted into the nose.

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Can a Sense of Purpose Slow Alzheimer’s?

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Few people would argue that having a sense of purpose in life is anything but a good thing. The Egyptian Book of the Dead even contains a prayer for it: “May I be given a god’s duty; a burden that matters.” In the modern world, exhorting young people to seek a sense of purpose in life is a mainstay of college commencement speeches, and a collective longing for a feeling of purpose and fulfillment drove evangelical minister Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life into the best-selling stratosphere.

Medical professionals have also found correlations between a person’s sense of purpose and their physical health and survival. As far back as 1946, the Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl, who spent several years in concentration camps during WWII and lost his entire family in the Holocaust, found that the people who survived the concentration camps best were those who believed they had a reason, mission, or purpose that required their survival. Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl’s classic book on the subject (which he wrote in nine days following his release from the camps) also notes that people who could find a reason or worthwhile purpose for their suffering were far less debilitated by it.

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Device to slow down Alzheimer’s disease

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New research suggests a ‘brain pacemaker’ may slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.  In a small study, John Hopkins University scientists found a device that sends electrical impulses to the brain’s memory regions appeared to increase neuron activity in patients who were suspected to have the disease.

The researchers implanted the device in six people with mild or early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.  The device includes electrodes, which are implanted in the brain, and a pacemaker, which is implanted in the chest, connected to the electrodes by wires.  The pacemaker orders the electrodes to continuously stimulate the brain.  This technique is known as deep brain stimulation, or DBS.

A year after implanting the device, the researchers conducted PET scans on the patients and found they actually showed an increase of glucose metabolism, which the brain uses as fuel to function.  Greater amounts of glucose metabolism also indicate greater amounts of brain cell activity, according to the researchers.

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Omega-3s may help lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease

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Eating foods such as chicken, fish and nuts may help lower blood levels of a protein strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease and memory problems, according to new research.

In the Columbia University study, people who consumed diets rich in omega-3 fatty acids had significantly lower levels of a protein called beta-amyloid in their blood than those who did not consume as much of the nutrient.

According to the research, eating one more gram of omega-3s than average per week was associated with 20 to 30 percent lower levels of beta-amyloid.  One gram is approximately equal to half a fillet of salmon.

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Alzheimer’s Disease Imaging Agents

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Three of the late-breaker studies (dubbed “Emerging Science” in the meeting program) address imaging agents for detecting beta-amyloid plaques in the brains of live patients.

One such product, florbetapir (Amyvid), was just approved by the FDA, but competing products are not far behind.

Meeting attendees will hear new results with two of these, florbetaben and flutemetamol. Like florbetapir, both are 18F-labeled compounds that bind selectively to beta-amyloid plaques and light up on PET scans.

The florbetaben study abstract indicates that findings on PET scans in near-death patients correlated strongly with their actual plaques measured at autopsy a short time later.

A similar study with flutemetamol came up with similar results, according to its abstract.

In a study with possibly more clinical relevance, flutemetamol binding in the brains of 11 community-dwelling older people with memory loss correlated significantly with their performance on a cognition test.

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