Millions Take This Joint Supplement but Scientists Found a Concerning Alzheimer’s Link

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A widely used supplement marketed for joint pain relief may be linked to faster progression of Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research from University of Florida scientists.

The study found that people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who reported taking glucosamine were more likely to develop dementia than those who did not use the supplement. The findings come from a large analysis of patient records, along with brain imaging studies in both human tissue and mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Age-Related Mutations in Brain Immune Cells Linked to Alzheimer’s Inflammation

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Researchers have uncovered evidence that age-related genetic mutations commonly associated with cancer and blood disorders may also contribute to the chronic brain inflammation characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

In a study published in Cell, investigators from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Boston Children’s Hospital identified somatic mutations in brain immune cells from patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The findings suggest that genetic alterations acquired during aging may reshape the behavior of these cells, driving inflammatory processes linked to neurodegeneration.

The work introduces a potential new biological mechanism connecting aging, immune dysfunction, and Alzheimer’s disease, a condition that affects millions of people worldwide and remains one of the leading causes of dementia.

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Correlation Between Dental Health and Alzheimer’s

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June is Alzheimers & Brain Awareness Month. Dr. Nevin Mathai, Dental Director and spokesperson for Delta Dental of Missouri and DeltaVision drops by StudioSTL to tell us about the link between oral and vision health and the debilitating disease. Research continues to show that oral health, vision health, and brain health are closely connected. Gum disease creates chronic inflammation and allows harmful bacteria to enter the bloodstream, which may reach the brain and accelerate the progression of Alzheimers disease. People with gum disease are 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer`s compared to those with healthy gums. There is also a connection between deteriorating eye health and an increased risk of cognitive decline. For individuals living with cognitive decline, maintaining good vision and oral health can become more difficult. Find out what you can do to help protect your brain and how Delta Dental and Vision can help.

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Magic mushrooms and Alzheimer’s: what one remarkable case can tell us

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Magic mushrooms are better known for producing hallucinations and altering people’s sense of reality than for treating brain diseases. Most people associate them with tripping, rather than Alzheimer’s disease.

But a report on an individual patient has prompted scientists to ask whether psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, could have unexpected effects on the ageing brain.

The report describes changes observed in a Japanese-American woman in her 80s with advanced Alzheimer’s disease after she received psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Dementia is a broad term for symptoms that affect memory, thinking and everyday independence. Alzheimer’s disease is its most common cause.

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Researchers Find Cancer-Linked Mutations in Alzheimer’s Brain Cells

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The microglia are small immune cells that patrol the brain looking for damage and invaders. When they encounter damage, infections, or protein plaques, they retract their many arms and turn into a rounded blob that eats invaders and toxins, and alerts other immune cells. 

In Alzheimer’s, these protective cells go haywire, leading to excess inflammation which might help drive the disease. 

Previous research suggested an unexpected explanation for the phenomenon: A cancer-driving genetic mutation in the microglia. August Yue Huang, a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, wanted to know whether the microglia of people with Alzheimer’s harbored more of these mutations than in healthy aging adults. 

His recent study in the journal Cell showed that microglia harbor multiple cancer-driving mutations, shifting them into a pro-inflammatory state that may contribute to Alzheimer’s. 

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Error unawareness as a driver of cognitive decline in individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s disease

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Anosognosia, or unawareness of one’s deficits, predicts faster clinical progression in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), though its mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated five-year trajectories of response awareness and error-monitoring efficiency using second-order judgments from an annual word recognition memory task in cognitively unimpaired individuals at risk for AD from the INSIGHT-preAD cohort. Participants were divided into three groups according to amyloid status at baseline (positive, A + ; negative, A–) and clinical progression (controls, CTRL A+ or A–; and progressors, PROG). Task accuracy declined in PROG, while CTRL A+ showed continued learning, and CTRL A– remained accurate. Inefficient error-monitoring predicted subsequent performance decline in the PROG, with a strong interaction between accuracy and error-monitoring already at baseline. This effect was primarily driven by error unawareness. These findings provide first evidence that error unawareness — a core feature of anosognosia — may foster cognitive decline through the disruption of error-feedback learning mechanisms, potentially accelerating AD progression.

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