Results of a new interesting study suggest that the more weight a woman is carrying, the greater their risk is of developing memory loss.

For years researchers have been trying to find clues that would indicate memory loss which can lead to Alzheimer’s disease and now they have found what they say is a key contributor.

The study was carried out by researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago who analyzed data from the Women’s Health Initiative, comparing body mass index of 8,745 postmenopausal women to their mental compitence tests.

They found that the higher the BMIs of study participants, the lower they scored on an array of different mental tasks and according to Dr. Diana Kerwin this proves that obesity can mess with the mind.

“While the women’s scores were still in the normal range, the added weight definitely had a detrimental effect,” she said.

“Even if you do have normal blood pressure and you’re not diabetic, it still should be something that’s looked at as an independent risk factor for your brain health.”

SOURCE: www.dbtechno.com

Boston (SmartAboutHealth) – A new study has revealed that Alzheimer’s not only causes cognitive decline and memory loss, but also takes emotions out of those who suffer from the terrible disease.

Researchers from the University of Florida have been doing a great deal of work on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia to see the various ways in which it will impact its victims.

One interesting thing that they found is that Alzheimer’s can actually suck the emotions right out of people, to the point where they will respond differently to things once the disease has developed when compared to before the disease.

The study was carried out by having a group of patients with Alzheimer’s experience ten different negative pictures, and ten different positive pictures.

The idea was to see how they would react when it comes these pictures, and how Alzheimer’s would impact their reaction.

Researchers stated that the Alzheimer’s patients, within their brains, realized what their emotions were, but they were different when compared those who did not have Alzheimer’s.

Emotions could vary depending on the case and the patient, but from this study those who have Alzheimer’s are not able to actively display their emotions the same way healthy people can.

The study has been published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.

SOURCE: http://smartabouthealth.net

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer

Scientists are reporting advances in detecting and predicting Alzheimer’s disease at a conference in Honolulu this week, plus more proof that getting enough exercise and vitamin D may lower your risk.

There are better brain scans to spot Alzheimer’s disease. More genes that affect risk. Blood and spinal fluid tests that may help tell who will develop the mind-robbing illness and when.

But what is needed most — a treatment that does more than just ease symptoms — is not at hand.

“We don’t have anything that slows or stops the course,” said William Thies, the Alzheimer’s Association scientific director. “We’re really in a silent window right now” with new drugs, he said.

Several promising ones flopped in late-stage tests — most recently, Pfizer Inc.’s Dimebon. Results on several others won’t be ready until next year.

Still, there is some progress against Alzheimer’s, a dementia that afflicts more than 5 million Americans and more than 26 million people worldwide. Highlights of the research being reported this week:

_Prevention. Moderate to heavy exercisers had half the risk of developing dementia compared with less active people, researchers from the long-running Framingham Heart Study reported Sunday. Earlier studies also found exercise helps.

“That seems to be as good as anything” for preventing dementia, said Dr. Richard Mayeux, a Columbia University neurologist and conference leader.

Another big government-funded study found that vitamin D deficiency can raise the risk of mental impairment up to fourfold. This doesn’t mean taking supplements is a good idea, doctors warn. A large study is testing whether that is safe and helps prevent a variety of diseases.

_Novel treatments. Tests of an insulin nose spray to improve cognition gave encouraging results, but “it’s still a pilot trial” and larger studies are needed to see if this works and is safe, said Laurie Ryan. She oversees Alzheimer’s study grants for the National Institute on Aging, which funded the work.

It’s based on the theory that Alzheimer’s and diabetes are related. Diabetics seem to have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s, and Alzheimer’s patients tend to have insulin resistance, Ryan said. Giving insulin as a nose spray sends it straight to the brain without affecting blood-sugar levels, she explained.

“If it works, it would certainly be an easy thing to administer. It’s not like taking a shot each day,” and likely would be cheap, she said.

_Improved detection. Many types of imaging can document dementia, which usually is diagnosed through cognition tests. For several years, scientists have used one such method — a radioactive dye and PET scans — to see the sticky brain plaque that is a key feature of Alzheimer’s. But the dye is tough to use, and at least four companies are developing better ones.

Philadelphia-based Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc. reports success with one such dye, and says it may offer an early warning for those on their way to developing Alzheimer’s. The claim has led to some media buzz.

“I don’t want to downgrade — it’s a significant accomplishment,” Thies said, but it mostly improves on the existing test.

A PET scan costs $3,000 to $5,000 plus whatever Avid would charge for the dye, if it wins federal approval. It may require special training to give the test and interpret it, so it likely will remain mostly a research tool to pick the right patients for clinical trials and monitor a drug’s effects, Thies said.

Mayeux, the Alzheimer’s conference leader, agreed.

“It’s not going to be helpful in diagnosis,” because a lot of people without Alzheimer’s have plaque that can be seen on scans, he said. These people may go on to develop Alzheimer’s someday, but more study would have to establish that for it to become a definitive diagnostic test, rather than a tool to monitor plaque levels in research, he said.

Until there are better treatments, there will be little demand for tests that show you have or are destined to get the disease, several experts said. There’s little testing now for the first gene strongly tied to Alzheimer’s risk, ApoE-4.

“It’s kind of like finding high cholesterol” but not having drugs that can lower it, said Dr. Mark Sager, director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was involved in a study of a different Alzheimer’s-linked gene that will be reported this week.

Scientists also don’t know if the plaque is a cause, an effect, or just a sign of Alzheimer’s. Two experimental drugs seemed to clear plaque but did not lead to clinical improvement.

“We’ve still got a long way to go,” Sager said.

SOURCE: Associated Press

By Kanoko Matsuyama

July 12 (Bloomberg) — Alzheimer’s disease can be detected with a brain scan using radioactive dye developed by Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc., a study found, marking a step forward to the first tool to pinpoint the disease in 100 years.

Patients with a life expectancy of less than six months underwent brain scans using Avid’s dye. After death, their brains were autopsied. There was a strong correlation between plaques found in brain tissues and the places imaging suggested the protein would be, according to an abstract released at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Honolulu.

If the dye, called florbetapir, wins regulatory approval, doctors will have the first tool for a quick, definitive diagnosis since German physician Alois Alzheimer described the disease in 1906. Doctors today rely on memory tests, family histories and interviews with relatives. Autopsies are still needed to check for the presence of the brain protein called beta amyloid, a hallmark of the illness.

The past trials “made us think that it’s working well,” Daniel Skovronsky, Avid’s chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview before the study’s release. “Our hope is that once this agent is approved, perhaps it could be used to rule out Alzheimer’s.”

The study, part of the final stage of testing required to get U.S. approval, involved 220 people who were near the end of lives with illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. Philadelphia-based Avid aims to submit its results to the Food and Drug Administration this year, Skovronsky said.

Racing GE, Bayer

The company, General Electric Co. and Bayer AG are racing to develop chemical dyes to identify beta amyloid, creating diagnostics with a potential market of $3 billion a year, according to Harry Glorikian of consulting firm Scientia Advisors.

Avid is the first to finish the final stage of human testing. All three of the imaging tests are designed to cause beta amyloid clumps to light up when patients’ brains are scanned using PET, or positron emission tomography. The scanners read radiation from the dyes, which bind to beta amyloid.
A brain scan using florbetapir identified people at increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a separate study led by Reisa A. Sperling, a researcher at Harvard Medical School. Among patients who had mild cognitive impairment, 22 percent with amyloid plaques developed Alzheimer’s disease within a year, compared with 3 percent of those without the plaques, according to the findings presented at the conference.

As many as 5.1 million Americans may have Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia in older people, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

–Editors: Kristen Hallam, Lena Lee.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kanoko Matsuyama in Tokyo at kmatsuyama2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net; Jason Gale at j.gale@bloomberg.net.

SOURCE: www.businessweek.com

Scientists have discovered a compound that restores the capacity to form new memories in aging rats, likely by improving the survival of newborn neurons in the brain’s memory hub.

Rodents treated with P7C3 for two months significantly outperformed their placebo-treated peers on a water maze task, a standard assay of hippocampus-dependent learning. This was traced to a threefold higher-than-normal level of newborn neurons in the dentate gyrus of the treated animals. Rats were used instead of mice for this phase of the study because the genetically engineered mice could not swim.

The researchers pinpointed a derivative of P7C3, called A20, which is even more protective than the parent compound. They also produced evidence suggesting that two other neuroprotective compounds eyed as possible Alzheimer’s cures may work through the same mechanism as P7C3. The A20 derivative proved 300 times more potent than one of these compounds currently in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease.

This suggested that even more potent neuroprotective agents could potentially be discovered using the same methods. Following up on these leads, the researchers are now searching for the molecular target of P7C3 – key to discovering the underlying neuroprotective mechanism.

SOURCE: www.nextbigfuture.com

Clusterin identified as a ‘peripheral signature’ of Alzheimer’s but not a stand-alone biomarker

THURSDAY, July 8 (HealthDay News) — Elevated plasma concentration of clusterin is associated with Alzheimer’s disease pathology, severity, and rate of clinical progression, according to research published in the July issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Madhav Thambisetty, M.D., of King’s College London, and colleagues, using data on subjects from two studies of Alzheimer’s disease, compared blood samples from subjects with the disease, subjects with mild cognitive impairment, and healthy subjects to identify associations of blood proteins with brain atrophy, disease severity, and clinical progression rate. In an extension study in six-month-old transgenic mice modeling Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers also looked for associations between candidate proteins and brain amyloid.

The researchers found that clusterin/apolipoprotein J was associated with disease severity at baseline, entorhinal cortex atrophy, and rapid disease progression. Among subjects with Alzheimer’s disease, increased clusterin messenger RNA in the blood also was observed. A greater concentration of clusterin in blood was associated with a greater burden of amyloid-β in the medial temporal lobe. In the mouse model, the researchers found increased blood clusterin, age-related increased brain clusterin, and amyloid and clusterin together in brain plaques.

“We identified clusterin as a plasma protein associated with disease pathology, severity, and progression in Alzheimer’s disease. Although these findings do not support the clinical utility of plasma clusterin concentration as a stand-alone biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease, they reveal a robust peripheral signature of this amyloid chaperone protein that is responsive to key features of disease pathology,” the authors write.

Kings College London has registered as intellectual property a process for the use of plasma proteins, including clusterin, as Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers, with two of the study authors named as inventors. Another study author disclosed receiving research support from pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

SOURCE: www.modernmedicine.com

According to a recent health research report published on www.sciencedaily.com, risk of Alzheimer’s disease in the advanced age decreases if the amount of Vitamin E in the blood is more. This shows that cognitive deterioration in elderly can easily be prevented with the help of Vitamin E.

This research has been done in Sweden and was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s disease.
The study was led by Dr. Francesca Mangialasche and wad conducted at the Aging Research Center in Stockholm in association with Perugia university’s Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics.

www.esciencenews.com also reported that the study was conducted with 232 subjects who were more than 80 years. When the study began the subjects did not have any signs of dementia but in the course for 6 years almost 57 cases of Alzheimer’s disease were found.

Dr. Francesca exclaimed that they “hypothesized that all the vitamin E family members could be important in protecting against AD. If confirmed, this result has implications for both individuals and society; as 70 percent of all dementia cases in the general population occur in people over 75 years of age and the study suggests a protective effect of vitamin E against AD in individuals aged 80+.”
Good sources of Vitamin E include spinach, almonds, eggs, nuts, milk, seeds and wholegrain foods.
Celebrities who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease include former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston.

SOURCE: www.celebrities-with-diseases.com

A simple blood test to predict Alzheimer’s disease up to ten years before symptoms appear could be developed after researchers found high levels of a protein can be an early sign of the condition.

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Published: 9:30PM BST 05 Jul 2010

Scientists have suggested that levels of the protein called clusterin rise ‘many years’ before symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease first appear.

An early test for the condition could allow those patients could have early treatment and make improvements to their lifestyle to minimise the impact of the disease.

The study, conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, also found that very high levels of the protein may be linked with more rapid and severe memory loss.

Patient groups said the prospect of a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease was the ‘holy grail’ for researchers in this area and the latest findings bring this a step closer.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia in Britain and affects almost 500,000 people. This is expected to double by 2050 as the population ages.

The ethics of any blood test to identify those in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s disease would need to be examined carefully as there is no cure for the condition.

The researchers compared blood samples taken from 300 people with either Alzheimer’s disease, mild impairment or normal brain function.

The found that clusterin levels were linked with Alzheimer’s symptoms and higher levels indicated more rapid and severe memory loss and brain shrinkage as shown on brain scans.

Experiments with mice showed that the protein is produced in increasing amounts with age and is also linked to the development of plaques in the brain which interfere with cell communications systems. The clusterin surrounded the plaques.

It is not known if the plaques are the cause of Alzheimer’s disease or a sign of it but this research has shown that the body produces greater quantities of clusterin along with the plaques and it may be an attempt to protect the brain from the build up of the plaques.

Therefore high levels of clusterin, which can be detected in a blood sample, could be used as an early warning sign that the body is already fighting Alzheimer’s disease.

The findings are published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Using 60 patients in America they also found that clusterin levels can be used to predict Alzheimer’s onset up to ten years before symptoms appear. Clusterin levels were measured and compared with brain scans taken from the same patients ten years later.

This revealed that the patients with high clusterin had high levels of plaques in the brain ten years later and this is an indication of the condition.

The researchers have not yet established what level of clusterin is normal and at what exact level it would indicate Alzheimer’s was developing and this is the subject of further investigations.

Lead author Dr Madhav Thambisetty, formerly of the Institute of Psychiatry and now working in America, said: “We are very enthusiastic about these results because they identify a strong signal in blood from clusterin protein that appears to be relevant to both pathology and symptoms in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, adding further evidence to the role of clusterin in Alzheimer’s disease.

“A primary goal in Alzheimer’s research is to develop an inexpensive, easily administered test to accurately detect and track the progression of this devastating disease.

“Identifying clusterin as a blood biomarker that may be relevant to both the pathology and symptoms of the disease may bring us closer to this goal.”

Other studies have linked the gene involved in the production of clusterin to Alzheimer’s disease.

Professor Simon Lovestone, director of the research centre for mental health at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London, added: “Our results add further evidence to the role of clusterin in Alzheimer’s disease and though not a test in itself we hope these findings will be taken up by other research groups and if confirmed independently, will help us conclude that clusterin levels in blood are truly a marker of disease pathology in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Rebecca Wood, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: “A simple blood test for detecting Alzheimer’s has long been the holy grail for dementia researchers and these new findings edge us closer in the search. Early detection of dementia will be crucial to ensuring the treatments of the future can be given swiftly and when most effective.

“Research is the only answer to dementia, yet our scientists remain in desperate need of funds. Investing in research now will bring the treatment breakthroughs we so urgently need in a world where 35 million live with this devastating condition.”

SOURCE: www.telegraph.co.uk

July 1, 2010 (WLS) — Researchers claim they have found the best predictor of Alzheimer’s disease so far.

It’s a combination of two tests.

One is an imaging test of the brain that looks at how well it uses glucose or sugar. The other is a memory recall test.

People with mild cognitive impairment who had poorer scores on both of those tests were almost 12 times more likely to progress to Alzheimer’s disease.

The study appears in the journal Neurology.

SOURCE: http://abclocal.go.com

NEW YORK – It’s believed exercise can lower the risk of Alzheimer’s and a new study suggests the earlier the better.

Researchers found women who were physically active in their teens were less likely to develop dementia later in life.

Experts believe exercise stimulates neurons in the brain and also reduces risk factors for dementia like obesity and high cholesterol.

SOURCE – Journal of the American Geriatrics Society