Alzheimers Disease

Besides age, the biggest risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease is having a parent or other first-degree relative with the condition. A new study adds to growing evidence that inheriting it from your mother is much worse than inheriting it from your father. Researchers at the University of Kansas School of Medicine recruited 21 adult children (age 63 to 83) of Alzheimer’s patients who were still “cognitively intact.” They examined their brains using an MRI scanner on two occasions, two years apart.

For seniors and their families, Alzheimer's disease and its hefty price tag are an increasingly scary prospect. About 5.4 million Americans are affected by Alzheimer's disease, making it the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Because of growing life expectancies and aging baby boomers, that number is expected to triple by 2050. Alayna Tillman's mother and aunt both have Alzheimer's disease and live with Tillman, her husband and two sons in Lake View Terrace. Tillman says Medicare pays for many of the medical costs her mom and aunt incur.

Alzheimer’s disease isn’t always easy to recognize because early symptoms can be mistaken for normal aging. This is particularly true in the Latino community where awareness and resources may be in short supply. The Chicago Tribune says a new effort in that city aims to close the gap by having specialists conduct memory screenings and follow-up services in Spanish. "Alzheimer's exacts a particularly heavy toll among Latinos, who tend to get the condition almost seven years earlier and live with it longer than white Americans, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at San Francisco," the story says.

As baby boomers enter their golden years, the number of people afflicted with Alzheimer's disease is expected to reach 13.8 million by 2050 - millions more than previously anticipated, according to a new study in the journal Neurology. If researchers can't find a way to reduce the prevalence of the brain disease, the cost to care for all of these patients could top $1 trillion a year, experts say. Alzheimer's is a progressive brain disease that damages patients' memory and cognitive skills, ultimately leaving them unable to care for themselves.

The Grammy Award-winning singer Glen Campbell announced this week that he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. And then he said he'd be going on the road for a farewell tour. It's not unusual for a public figure to reveal a diagnosis of the insidious disease. Former President Reagan told the world of his battle with Alzheimer's in a poignant letter in 1994. Actor Charlton Heston disclosed, via a taped statement, that he was suffering from symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer's.

Here’s yet another reason to watch your cholesterol – the “good” kind may reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life. That nugget comes from researchers at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. They recruited 1,130 senior citizens from Manhattan (all of them age 65 or older) and took baseline measurements of their cholesterol levels and their neurological states. They also checked to see whether these seniors had a particular mutation in the APOE gene that could increase their risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

Seen any good comedies about Alzheimer's disease lately? "One of the things you realize in the course of this kind of degenerative (process) is that either you develop a sense of humor and a sense of patience--or you don't cope," said Steven Kent, director of Jo Carson's "Daytrips" (at the Los Angeles Theatre Center). The play focuses on three generations of a contemporary Tennessee family: grandmother, mother and daughter (whose character doubles as the narrator).

A virus may cause at least some cases of Alzheimer's disease, a mental disorder that affects about 2.5 million Americans, according to researchers at Yale University. The researchers found that white blood cells from relatives of Alzheimer's victims caused an Alzheimer's-like disease when they were injected into hamsters. Neurologists have long suspected that Alzheimer's might be caused by a virus, but more than 50 previous attempts to transmit the disease to animals were unsuccessful.

USC researchers have developed a new clue about the cause of Alzheimer's disease, a mystifying disease that causes mental deterioration in as many as 4 million aging Americans. The primary physical manifestation of Alzheimer's in the brain is the accumulation of clumps of a protein called amyloid. These protein deposits may interfere with normal communication between brain cells.

Relatives of Alzheimer's disease patients face an escalating chance of developing the condition as they age, and that likelihood rises markedly starting at age 75 and reaches 50% by age 90, a new study has found. At age 65, such relatives have a 2.7% chance of developing the disease; by age 75, the risk increases to 14.6% and by age 86 to nearly 46%, according to the study. By 90, one of two Alzheimer's patients' blood relatives could statistically expect to develop the disorder.

Beta blockers, a venerable class of blood pressure drugs that has fallen from favor in recent years, may help protect the aging brain against changes linked to Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia that rob memory and mental function, new research indicates. In autopsies on the brains of 774 men after their deaths, scientists found that those who took beta blockers to help control hypertension had fewer of the brain lesions and less of the brain shrinkage seen in Alzheimer's than men who took other types of blood pressure medications and those who left the condition untreated.

After sparking widespread comeback chatter last year with his album "The Bravest Man in the Universe," soul singer Bobby Womack has announced that he's experiencing early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. "The doctor says, 'You have signs of Alzheimer's,' " Womack told the BBC's Gilles Peterson in an interview on the latter's Radio 6 program. "It's not bad yet, but it's gonna get worse. " Womack, 68, admitted that he's having trouble remembering things, including the name of Damon Albarn, who co-produced "The Bravest Man in the Universe" with XL Recordings chief Richard Russell.

A biological medication already widely used to treat plaque psoriasis may be able to slow the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, a new study has found. The same study found that in older mice with established Alzheimer's, this treatment approach, which suppresses the brain's immune reaction to beta amyloid, brought a marked improvement in cognitive function and may even halt or reverse early signs of Alzheimer's. The new study was published this week in the journal Nature Medicine.

Asserting "we are at an exceptional moment" in the hunt for an Alzheimer'sdiseasetreatment, National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins on Tuesday promised a raft of new research aimed at stopping and reversing the memory-robbing disorder by the year 2025. In unveiling a first-ever "national strategy" on Alzheimer's disease, Collins launched several new projects and clinical trials--including a whole-genome sequencing effort to identify genes that confer vulnerability to--or protection against-- Alzheimer's, and a trial to explore whether an inhaled form of insulin will slow progression of the disease.

There is no cure for Alzheimer's disease, and as far as treatment goes, the best doctors can do (for now) is try to slow its progression. Identifying people in the earliest stages of the disease - even before any symptoms appear - would thus be very useful. But how? By using MRI scans to measure the thickness of specific parts of the brain, that's how. A new study from the journal Neurology reports that an “AD signature” can predict which people with normal brain function are most likely to suffer cognitive decline in the relatively near future.

Pretty much everyone who wanders into Pat Summitt's office or visits her basketball practice these days has learned to fear the iPad. The coach keeps her tablet filled with brain-wrenching games. Crossword puzzles and Sudoku. Math quizzes and memory tests. "When people come by," said Tyler, her son, "she gets them to sit down and try one of those things. " It was seven months ago that doctors diagnosed Summitt with early-onset dementia, Alzheimer's type, an incurable brain disease that affects memory, thinking and behavior.

The vaunted protection that intellectually active adults get from Alzheimer’s disease has a dark downside, a study released Wednesday has found. Once dementia symptoms become evident and Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed in such patients, their mental decline can come with frightening speed.      That finding, published in the journal Neurology , comes from a study of 1,157 Chicago-based seniors who were followed for an average of just over 11 years. Six years after gauging the extent to which the study participants engaged in activities that challenged their mental capacities, researchers from Rush University Medical Center Alzheimer’s Disease Center made periodic assessments of the study participants’ cognitive health and traced the trajectories of their brain health.

When Sargent Shriver was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003, he seized the moment as an opportunity to tell the public and help raise awareness of the disease. Shriver died Tuesday at 95. The longtime architect of social change and his wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded the Profiles in Courage Awards that have been presented at the Alzheimer's Assn.'s annual galas since 2004. The association says of his death: "The Shriver family continues to raise awareness about Alzheimer's by contributing to an increased dialogue about the disease among Americans and by encouraging the government to increase their focus on Alzheimer's disease, including vocal support for the National Alzheimer's Project Act, an Alzheimer's Association-supported landmark act signed into law by President Obama in early January.

There's one thing that all Alzheimer's researchers agree on: The mind-robbing illness is heartbreaking. But after three decades of study that have produced neither cure nor medications that significantly slow its progress, some researchers are asking: What if it's not a disease with a cure? What if it's just an unfortunate but inevitable part of aging, along with wrinkly skin, osteoporosis and heart disease? In a study in the December issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, a research group led by Dr. Ming Chen at the University of South Florida suggests that "tremendous social pressures" have pushed scientists to target Alzheimer's as a curable disease.

The decision by health experts to separate Alzheimer's disease from age-related dementia and deem it potentially curable  "opened a Pandora's box" and may have misdirected research for decades, a team of scientists suggests in a new analysis of the field. Despite great efforts to find treatments to stop or slow progression of the disease, there are only a few medications for Alzheimer's disease and they only help mitigate symptoms, not the disease process. In their paper, published in the December issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease , researchers from the University of South Florida propose that senile dementia, which includes Alzheimer's, is not a distinct disease but can be explained by simple aging along with other risk factors.