Category Archives: Research

Tiny electrical shocks to the brain appear to enhance memory

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Lightly shocking a person’s brain just before they learned a new task appeared to strengthen memory in a handful of patients with epilepsy, a tantalizing result that could have implications for Alzheimer’s disease, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

Pacemaker devices known as deep brain stimulators made by Medtronic and St. Jude Medical are already used to calm muscle tremors in patients with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, and are being tested for a host of other conditions such as treatment-resistant depression.

The devices are implanted under the skin in the chest with wires leading up the neck connected to tiny electrodes implanted deep in the brain, which produce electrical impulses.

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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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How Alzheimer’s spread in brain

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Two different research groups, which worked independent of each other, have made the same important discovery on how Alzheimer’s disease spreads in the brain.

According to a story in the New York Times in February 2, the groups’ findings have the potential to give us a much more sophisticated understanding of what goes wrong in Alzheimer’s disease and, more importantly, what can be done to prevent or repair damage in the brain.

The Times reported on the research teams of Bradley T. Hyman, MD, Ph.D., at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and Karen E. Duff, Ph.D., of Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Each research group found that the Alzheimer’s disease protein called tau can apparently spread from one part of the brain to other connected areas by effectively “jumping” from one nerve cell, neuron, to another.

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Researchers replicate Alzheimer’s disease neurons with stem cells

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Scientists have successfully replicated Alzheimer’s disease neurons with stem cells for the first time in a landmark, multi-year study – an achievement that may lead to critical new understanding of the disease, the scientists said.

Researchers out of UC San Diego School of Medicine created in vitro models of genetic and sporadic forms of Alzheimer’s disease, using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) from patients who suffered from the neurodegenerative disorder.  The neurons were purified, meaning they were separated from other types of cells, to reduce variability in the experiment.

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Could nicotine patches help Alzheimer’s patients?

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In one study, Harvard and University of Massachusetts researchers recruited 787 adults who had recently quit smoking. At the outset, the participants were asked what, if any, aids they had used to help them kick the habit, including nicotine replacement therapy (such as patches, gum and inhalers), got advice from a doctor, or joined a smoking-cessation program. The researchers then followed the subjects over a period of five years to see who resumed smoking.

The findings, published in the journal Tobacco Control, revealed that one-third of those who quit eventually succumbed to their old vice. What’s more, there was no significant difference in the relapse rate among people who used nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) and those who didn’t.

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Adiponectin associated with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease risk in women

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Higher plasma adiponectin levels may be an independent risk factor for all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in women, according to data recently published in the Archives of Neurology.

“It is well established that insulin signaling is dysfunctional in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and since adiponectin enhances insulin sensitivity, one would also expect beneficial actions protecting against cognitive decline,” the researchers wrote. “Our data, however, indicate that elevated adiponectin level was associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in women.”

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