Alzheimer; News from the web:

The Alzheimer prevention registry sent us this:

Now Enrolling: The Brain Health Registry – Online

The purpose of the Brain Health Registry is to speed up the discovery of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders. Joining the Brain Health Registry is easy. Participation takes less than three hours per year and can be completed entirely online.

If you choose to participate, you will be required to agree to a consent form. Once you give your consent, you will complete some questionnaires about your medical history, current health and lifestyle and take some online memory and thinking tests. You will be asked to come back every 6 months to answer more questions and take more tests. You may also have the opportunity to participate in additional research studies.

Brain Health Registry researchers are looking for people who are:

• 18 years and older
• Healthy volunteers, as well as those who have been diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, or dementia

For a full description of the Brain Health Registry, please visit our website.

Alzheimer; News from the web:

Past research, mainly performed on animals, suggested the aggregates form in one region then spread throughout the brain, much like how cancer spreads.

The new study suggests that while such spread may occur, it’s not in fact the main driver of disease progression.

“Once we have these seeds, little bits of aggregate throughout the brain, they just multiply and that process controls the speed,” said Meisl.

An analogy from the COVID pandemic is how travel bans between nations generally proved ineffective at stopping the spread of the virus, because it was already replicating within the countries trying to keep it out.

The team was also able to determine the time it takes the aggregates to double in number — roughly five years. That is an “encouraging” figure, said Meisl, because it shows the brain’s neurons already are good at countering aggregates. 

“Maybe if we can make it just a tiny bit better we can significantly delay the onset of serious disease.”

Read all about it HERE

Alzheimer; News from the web:

The study, published in the journal Brain , found that the presence of a variant of the OAS1 gene increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by three to six per cent, while similar variants of the same gene increase the odds of contracting a case of severe COVID. In addition to presenting new possibilities for treatment, researchers hope this overlap may shed light on other infectious diseases and dementias.

Read all about it HERE