Dementia in the News

Mass General Magazine (September 20, 2010): Unforgettable Breakthroughs in Alzheimer's

Back in the 1980s, it was becoming evident that Alzheimer's disease was an imposing challenge whose weight on health and society was just beginning to be felt. As people began to live longer and the U.S. population began to age, more and more people were finding themselves on the receiving end of a diagnosis of this slow but deadly neurodegenerative disease.

ABC News (September 7, 2010): Cognitive Impairment Strikes Men More

Not only do women live longer than men, on average, but a new study from the Mayo Clinic suggests they also may keep their cognitive function longer, too.

In a study of more than 2,000 adults 70 to 89 years old, researchers found that men were 1.5 times more likely to experience mild cognitive decline than their female counterparts.

Los Angeles Times (September 1, 2010): For the Intellectually Active, Alzheimer's Diagnosis Begins a Steep Slide

The vaulted 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.

New York Times (September 1, 2010): Finding Suggests New Target for Alzheimer's Drugs

In a year when news about Alzheimer's disease seems to whipsaw between encouraging and disheartening, a new discovery by an 84-year-old scientist has illuminated a new direction.

The scientist, Paul Greengard, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on signaling in brain cells, still works in his Rockefellar University lab in New York City seven days a week, walking there from his apartment two blocks away, taking his aging Bernese mountain dog, Alpha.

Boston Globe (August 30, 2010): Using Venture World's Lessons to Battle Alzheimer's

When Henry McCance started at Greylock Partners in 1969, the venture capital industry had less than $100 million flowing into it each year, he estimates. Now, it's roughly a $20 billiion-a-year sector of the financial world that has backed companies whose products are, in many cases, staples of modern living.

Five years ago, McCance, now Greylock's chairman emeritus, started a nonprofit research foundation called the Cure Alzheimer's Fund.

New York Times (August 28, 2010): Years Later, No Magic Bullet Against Alzheimer's Disease

The scene was a kind of science court. On trial was the question “Can anything - running on a treadmill, eating more spinach, learning Arabic - prevent Alzheimer's disease or delay its progression?”

To try to answer that question, the National Institutes of Health sponsored the court, appointing a jury of 15 medical scientists with no vested interests in Alzheimer’s research. They would hear the evidence and reach a judgment on what the data showed.

The (UK) Daily Telegraph (August 28, 2010): Alzheimer's Risk 'Could Be Increased by Surgery'

Many doctors already suspect there may be a link between surgery and the onset of Alzheimer's.

Previous studies have suggested that between 10 and 30 percent of elderly people who undergo surgery suffer memory problems afterwards, but it has not been established whether these are a short-term response to physical trauma, or the beginnings of dementia.

Cognitive problems, ranging from memory loss to delirium, have been found most commonly when elderly people have undergone heart surgery, but also following other operations.

Bloomberg News (August 25, 2010): Link Between Diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease Strengthened

Two of the most common and dreaded illnesses in America may share a connection, with new research suggesting that having insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes raises your risk of developing the brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease.

After adjusting for other risk factors, the Japanese study found that people with the highest levels of fasting insulin had nearly six times the odds of having plaque deposits between nerves in the brain, compared to people with the lowest levels of fasting insulin.

New York Times (August 12, 2010): Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer's

In 2003, a group of scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and nonprofit groups joined in a project that experts say had no precedent: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer's disease in the human brain.

New York Times (August 9, 2010): Spinal-Fluid Test is Found to Predict Alzheimer's

Researchers report that a spinal fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer's disease.

Although there has been increasing evidence of the value of this and other tests in finding signs of Alzheimer’s, the study, which will appear Tuesday in the Archives of Neurology, shows how accurate they can be. The new result is one of a number of remarkable recent findings about Alzheimer’s.