Copyright 2009 Medical News Today Latest Alzheimer's / Dementia News From Medical News Today. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/sections/alzheimers/ admin@medicalnewstoday.com (MNT Admin) editors@medicalnewstoday.com (MNT Editors) en-us Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/170199.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/170199.php Middle-aged women with high levels of a specific amino acid in their blood are twice as likely to suffer from Alzheimer's many years later, reveals a thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. This discovery this could lead to a new and simple way of determining who is at risk long before there are any signs of the illness. Alzheimer's / Dementia Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/170008.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/170008.php This past October, 214 researchers from the U.S., Europe, and Australia, as well as representatives of families with aggressive genetic forms of Alzheimer disease (AD), met at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, to devote two intense days of talks and discussion to their goal of detecting this disease before symptoms appear. Alzheimer's / Dementia Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169960.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169960.php One of the many mysteries of Alzheimer's disease is how protein-like snippets called amyloid-beta peptides, which clump together to form plaques in the brain, may cause cell death, leading to the disease's devastating symptoms of memory loss and other mental difficulties. In order to answer that key question and develop new approaches to preventing the damage, scientists must first understand how amyloid-beta forms the telltale clumps. Alzheimer's / Dementia Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169979.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169979.php Scientists are reporting development of a nano-size capsule that boosts the body's uptake of curcumin, an ingredient in yellow curry now being evaluated in clinical trials for treatment of several diseases. Their study is in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication. Koji Wada and colleagues note that curcumin is a potent antioxidant found in the spice, turmeric. Nutrition / Diet Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169864.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169864.php In the fifth in PLoS Medicine's series of articles on mental, neurological and substance-use disorders in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), Martin Prince and colleagues discuss the treatment of dementia. Globally, 24.3 million people are affected by dementia and 4.6 million new cases occur annually. The prevalence of dementia is expected to double every 20 years, reaching 81.1 million by 2040. Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169856.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169856.php Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) and Medivation, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDVN) today announced the initiation of CONTACT and CONSTELLATION, two Phase 3 trials of the investigational drug dimebon (latrepirdine)* in patients with moderate-to-severe Alzheimer's disease (AD). Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169736.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169736.php Olympic swimmer Mark Forster and television presenters Phillippa Forrester and Cerri Burnell gave their backing to the Big Care Debate. They have all added their voice to a short film that highlights four real life experiences of why care matters. The Big Care Debate, which is looking at a series of potential options for the future of social care funding, draws to a close next week. Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169737.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169737.php Learning and memory tests can help predict whether a healthy person will develop Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) according to a report published in Neurology. People who have MCI are at an increased risk of going on to develop dementia. Alzheimer's Society comment 'Dementia develops in the brain many years before people start to notice there is something wrong. Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169709.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169709.php The sight loss charity, Thomas Pocklington Trust (1), calls for a fresh approach to dementia care after new research confirms a lack of attention to sight loss. A sensory model of care practice should be developed, says the charity after two new studies revealed a widespread failing to acknowledge the importance of sight loss. Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169720.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169720.php High blood pressure, evidence of arterial disease and markers of inflammation in the blood in middle age appear more common in individuals whose parents have Alzheimer's disease than in individuals without a parental history of the condition, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Hypertension Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169571.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169571.php New research shows that a rare brain disorder that causes early dementia is highly hereditary. The study is published in the November 3, 2009, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The brain disorder, called frontotemporal dementia, is formerly known as Pick's disease and destroys parts of the brain, leading to dementia, including problems with language or changes in behavior and personality. Alzheimer's / Dementia Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169483.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169483.php ExonHit Therapeutics (Paris:ALEHT) presented clinical data on the validation set "Alzheimer patients versus healthy controls" for AclarusDx™ (formerly EHT Dx21), its blood-based diagnostic test for the detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD), at the 2nd Conference of Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease (CTAD) in Las Vegas, USA. Alzheimer's / Dementia Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169354.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169354.php Biofield therapies, which claim to use subtle energy to stimulate the body's healing process, are promising complementary interventions for reducing the intensity of pain in a number of conditions, reducing anxiety for hospitalized patients and reducing agitated behaviors in dementia, over and above what standard treatments can achieve. However, longer-term effects are less clear. Dr. Shamini Jain, from the UCLA Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research, and Dr. Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169180.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169180.php There is no scientific proof that patients with moderate or severe Alzheimer's disease benefit from drugs containing the agent memantine. This is the conclusion in the final report that the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) published in September 2009. The report is part of a broader commission awarded by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) to assess both drug and non-drug therapy options for Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's / Dementia Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169174.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169174.php Besides their tremendous value in treating high cholesterol and lowering the risk of heart disease, statins have also been reported to potentially lower the risks of other diseases, such as dementia. However, a study in the October Journal of Lipid Research finds that similar statin drugs can have profoundly different effects on brain cells - both beneficial and detrimental. Statins Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169059.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169059.php Epilepsy drugs could be developed as a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases according to research published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration. The study found that nerve cells lived longer when treated with T-type calcium-channel blockers, which are commonly used to treat epilepsy. 'This study is interesting since other research has shown that anti-convulsant drugs reduce the tangles of proteins linked to Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's / Dementia Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169028.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169028.php Researchers in the USA have discovered a potential new function for anti-epileptic drugs in treating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The study, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Molecular Neurodegeneration, found that neurons in the brain were protected after treatment with T-type calcium-channel blockers, which are commonly used to treat epilepsy. Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169021.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/169021.php An epidemiological study on pneumonia and influenza (P&I) in adults age 65 and over reports that patients with dementia are diagnosed with flu less frequently, have shorter hospital stays, and have a fifty percent higher rate of death than those without dementia. Flu / Cold / SARS Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168943.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168943.php Researchers from France and the UK who set out to investigate whether people with Alzheimer's disease and diabetes have more rapid memory loss were surprised to find not only that they did not, but that their memory loss was actually slower than that of Alzheimer's patients without diabetes. Speculating on the reasons, they suggested it could be the effect of diabetes drugs, or that Alzheimer's patients with diabetes have different kinds of lesions in the brain. Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168933.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168933.php An epidemiological study on pneumonia and influenza (P&I) in adults age 65 and over reports that patients with dementia are diagnosed with flu less frequently, have shorter hospital stays, and have a fifty percent higher rate of death than those without dementia. Seniors / Aging Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168907.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168907.php An epidemiological study on pneumonia and influenza (P&I) in adults age 65 and over reports that patients with dementia are diagnosed with flu less frequently, have shorter hospital stays, and have a fifty percent higher rate of death than those without dementia. Flu / Cold / SARS Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168878.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168878.php Working like an architect, Prof. Hagit Eldar-Finkelman of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine is "building" a new drug, L803-MTS, to treat a number of central nervous system (CNS) diseases like Alzheimer's. In pre-clinical studies, it also shows promise against Parkinson's, Huntington's and diabetes. L803-MTS is based on the physical structure of the GSK3 protein, which plays a causative role in insulin resistance and Type II diabetes. Alzheimer's / Dementia Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168880.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168880.php A research collaboration led by biologists and neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania has found a molecular pathway in the brain that is the cause of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation. Just as important, the team believes that the cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation, such as an inability to focus, learn or memorize, may be reversible by reducing the concentration of a specific enzyme that builds up in the hippocampus of the brain. Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168777.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168777.php Research has shown that diabetes increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease and the risk of memory loss in people who don't have Alzheimer's disease. But it hasn't been clear whether people with Alzheimer's disease and diabetes have more rapid memory loss than those who have Alzheimer's disease but no diabetes. Alzheimer's / Dementia Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:00:00 PST http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168684.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168684.php Two studies are of particular note in theScientific Program of the 2009 Joint Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology (PAAO): a report by Swiss neuro-ophthalmic researchers about vision exam clues that should make ophthalmologists suspect an atypical variant of Alzheimer's disease; and new evidence from a Singapore National Eye Center study that diabetics who are nearsighted may be less susceptible to diabetic retinopathy. Eye Health / Blindness