Category: Dementia

Scientist around the world are reaching a new conclusion about what causes dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.

An out of control immune system could be the underlying cause of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, research finds.

There is now strong evidence that the body’s own immune system is causing cells in the brain to die.

Professor Robert Richards, who led the study, said:

“Dementia, including the most common form Alzheimer’s Disease, and related neurodegenerative conditions are dramatically rising in frequency as people live longer and our population ages.

[In the United States it] is predicting that by 2050 there will be almost double the number of people with dementia.

Currently we have no effective treatments to assist the millions of affected people, and these diseases are an enormous burden on families and the public health care system.”

Proteins called amyloid plaques were previously thought to be the culprits in Alzheimer’s, but the evidence is not strong enough.

Professor Richards said:

“Our interest in the body’s own (innate) immune system as the culprit began when we discovered that immune system agents become activated in a laboratory model of Huntington’s Disease.

Remarkably, researchers from other laboratories were at the same time reporting similar features in other neurodegenerative diseases.

When we pulled the evidence together, it made a very strong case that uncontrolled innate immunity is indeed the common cause.”

The immune system may malfunction as a result of various triggers such as toxins, genetic mutations or physical injuries.

Professor Richards said:

“We hope this new way of understanding neurodegeneration will lead to new treatments.

We now need to further investigate the immune signaling molecules, to identify new drug targets that will delay the onset and/or halt the progression of these devastating diseases.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience (Richards et al., 2016).

Brain image from Shutterstock

The other side of the drug is that it can also increase the chance of bleeds in the brain.

The common blood thinner Warfarin has been linked to increased dementia risk by a new study.

Warfarin is typically prescribed to help prevent clots and strokes.

However, the other side of the drug is that it can also increase the chance of bleeds in the brain.

Bleeds in the brain are linked to worse brain function over time and dementia.

The study involved people treated with the drug for atrial fibrillation, the most common form of arrhythmia.

Dr T. Jared Bunch, the study’s lead author, said:

“Our study results are the first to show that there are significant cognitive risk factors for patients treated with Warfarin over a long period of time regardless of the indication for anticoagulation.”

The study involved 10,537 people with no history of dementia who were followed up over 7 years.

Dr Bunch said:

“First, as physicians we have to understand that although we need to use anticoagulants for many reasons including to prevent stroke in AF patients, at that same time there are risks that need to be considered some of which we are only right now beginning to understand.

In this regard, only those that absolutely need blood thinners should be placed on them long-term.

Second, other medications like aspirin that may increase the blood thinners effect should be avoided unless there is a specific medical need.

Finally, in people that are on Warfarin in which the levels are erratic or difficult to control, switching to newer agents that are more predictable may lower risk.”

Naturally, anyone considering changing their medication should consult their physician.

The findings were presented at Heart Rhythm 2016 in San Francisco.

Image credit: cora alvarez

Hope for a general strategy against neurodegenerative disorders found.

A five-year study has identified a way of reversing the symptoms of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The research on fruit flies involves inhibiting two key enzymes.

Professor Flaviano Giorginia, one of the study’s authors, said:

 “The two most common neurodegenerative disorders worldwide are Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The treatment options for these diseases are limited, and to date no cures exist.

Our hope is that by improving our knowledge of how these nerve cells become sick and die in the brain, we can help devise ways to interfere with these processes, and thereby either delay disease onset or prevent disease altogether.”

The enzymes targeted by the research increase levels of a key metabolite called kynurenic acide.

Professor Giorgini explained:

“There is a fine balance between levels of “good” and “bad” metabolites that occurs in the kynurenine pathway.

In disease, it shifts towards the “bad”, and by inhibiting TDO or KMO, we shift it back to “good”.

For example, we find that if we inhibit either TDO or KMO in Huntington’s flies we reduce loss of neurons.

In Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s flies we see extension of the shortened lifespan exhibited by these flies, and we also reverse the defects they have in movement.

We have even used a drug-like chemical to inhibit TDO and found that this also alleviates ‘symptoms’.”

Professor Giorgini concluded:

“We are excited by these results, as they suggest that TDO and KMO inhibition could be a general strategy employed to improve symptoms in a myriad of neurodegenerative disorders, not just Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Indeed, five years ago we first showed that these manipulations could improve “symptoms” in Huntington’s disease model flies, so our next step is to validate our work in mammalian models and ultimately to see if such drugs could be helpful to patients in clinical trials”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Breda et al., 2016).

Alzheimer’s image from Shutterstock

Just five hours per week was enough to maintain the gains.

Mental agility can be increased by even a relatively small amount of language learning.

After only a week of study, students show improved attention skills — as well as learning a new language.

People in the study were learning Scottish Gaelic.

They were compared with a group who took a different one-week course that did not involve language.

Improvements were seen across the age range from 18 to 78 among people who took the language course.

Language learners were better able to switch their attention and filter out irrelevant details.

Continuing to learn a new language led to sustained improvements 9 months later, the researchers also found.

Dr Thomas Bak, the study’s first author, said:

“I think there are three important messages from our study: firstly, it is never too late to start a novel mental activity such as learning a new language.

Secondly, even a short intensive course can show beneficial effects on some cognitive functions.

Thirdly, this effect can be maintained through practice.”

Bilingualism is already linked to a whole host of benefits, including more gray matter in vital brain regions.

This is one of a growing number of studies showing the cognitive benefits of learning a second language later in life.

The authors explain that…

“…mental exercise (including bilingualism) can compensate to a certain degree for the effects of cognitive aging as well as for pathological brain processes such as dementia or stroke.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Blak et al., 2016).

10 Superb Psychological Advantages of Learning Another Language

Memory problems may not be the first sign of Alzheimer’s.

Difficulty creating mental maps of new surroundings could be the earliest sign of Alzheimer’s, research finds.

The sign is present long before it is possible to clinically diagnose Alzheimer’s.

Dr Denise Head, one of the study’s authors, said:

“These findings suggest that navigational tasks designed to assess a cognitive mapping strategy could represent a powerful new tool for detecting the very earliest Alzheimer’s disease-related changes in cognition.

The spatial navigation task used in this study to assess cognitive map skills was more sensitive at detecting preclinical Alzheimer’s disease than the standard psychometric task of episodic memory.”

The study involved people trying to navigate a maze on a computer.

The maze had a series of different landmarks and wallpaper patterns to aid navigation.

People were tested on how well they could navigate a learned route and how well they created a mental map of the maze.

Dr Head explained the results:

“People with cerebrospinal markers for preclinical Alzheimer’s disease demonstrated significant difficulties only when they had to form a cognitive map of the environment — an allocentric, place-learning navigation process associated with hippocampal function.

This same preclinical Alzheimer’s disease group showed little or no impairment on route learning tasks — an egocentric navigation process more closely associated with caudate function.”

Study participants with preclinical Alzheimer’s also found it harder to learn the locations of objects in the maze.

Dr Head concluded:

“These findings suggest that navigational tasks designed to assess a cognitive mapping strategy could represent a powerful tool for detecting the very earliest Alzheimer’s disease-related changes in cognition.”

The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Allison et al., 2016).

Those with the highest levels of calories burned saw a 50% reduction in their risk of Alzheimer’s.

Almost any type of physical activity that makes your heart pump can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, new research finds.

The more calories people burned during aerobic activity, the lower their risk of Alzheimer’s, the scientists found.

There were 15 leisure-time activities measured in the study:

• Swimming,
• hiking,
• aerobics,
• jogging,
• tennis,
• racquetball,
• walking,
• gardening,
• mowing,
• raking,
• golfing,
• bicycling,
• dancing,
• calisthenics,
• and riding an exercise cycle.

The study involved 876 people at four different locations in the US.

The average age was 78 and all were followed up over 30 years.

Those with the highest levels of calories burned saw a 50% reduction in their risk of Alzheimer’s.

The study’s authors write:

“…approximately 13% of AD [Alzheimer’s Disease] cases worldwide may be attributable to sedentary behavior.

A 25% reduction in sedentary behavior could potentially prevent more than 1 million AD cases globally.”

Brain scans also revealed that those exercising more had larger volumes in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes including the hippocampus (the brain’s memory centre).

Dr Cyrus A. Raji, the study’s first author, said:

“This is the first study in which we have been able to correlate the predictive benefit of different kinds of physical activity with the reduction of Alzheimer’s risk through specific relationships with better brain volume in such a large sample.”

Professor George Perry, Editor of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, said:

“Currently the greatest promise in Alzheimer’s disease research is lifestyle intervention including increased exercise.

[This is] a landmark study that links exercise to increases in grey mater and opens the field of lifestyle intervention to objective biological measurement.”

The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Raji et al., 2016).

Listening to music image from Shutterstock

Gray matter ageing slowed significantly by these two factors.

Staying in school and taking the stairs are two things that can help keep your brain young, new research finds.

The more years of school a person completes, the younger their brain appears.

Brain age decreases almost one year for each additional year of education.

For each flight of stairs climbed daily, brain age decreases by just over half a year.

Dr Jason Steffener, the study’s first author, said:

“There already exist many ‘Take the stairs’ campaigns in office environments and public transportation centres.

This study shows that these campaigns should also be expanded for older adults, so that they can work to keep their brains young.”

The research used brain imaging of 331 adults to reach these conclusions.

They looked at any gray matter loss and their education and exercise levels.

Dr Steffener said:

“This study shows that education and physical activity affect the difference between a physiological prediction of age and chronological age, and that people can actively do something to help their brains stay young.

In comparison to many other forms of physical activity, taking the stairs is something most older adults can and already do at least once a day, unlike vigorous forms of physical activity.

This is encouraging because it demonstrates that a simple thing like climbing stairs has great potential as an intervention tool to promote brain health.”

The study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging (Steffener et al., 2016).

Shiny brain image from Shutterstock

The snake venom originally came from a pit viper, which is found in South and Central America.

A drug contained in snake oil may help in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.

The drug may help the body’s natural defences against the build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain.

Amyloid plaques are lumps of protein which are usually kept in check by enzymes.

In people with Alzheimer’s, though, these enzymes do not do their job.

The molecule, which was discovered in snake venom, could help activate the enzymes and break down the plaques.

The snake venom originally came from a pit viper, which is found in South and Central America.

This is the result of a long search stretching back years by Dr Sanjaya Kuruppu.

The scientists have now developed a synthetic version and found that it works on human cells in the lab.

Although it might sound unusual, snake venoms are actually a common inspiration for pharmaceutical research.

The study was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports (Smith et al., 2016).

Alzheimer’s image from Shutterstock

Over 3,000 people had their personality, memory and thinking skills measured across 25 years.

Young adults who are hostile or aggressive and find it difficult to deal with stress have worse memory and thinking skills later on, a study finds.

The study surveyed 3,126 people who were asked about their:

• personality,
• attitudes,
• memory and thinking skills,
• aggressive behaviours and any trust issues,
• as well as how they coped with stress.

People were asked first when they were around around 25-years-old and then followed up when they were around 50.

Dr Lenore J. Launer, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We may not think of our personality traits as having any bearing on how well we think or remember things, but we found that the effect of having a hostile attitude and poor coping skills on thinking ability was similar to the effect of more than a decade of aging.”

The results showed that those with the highest levels of hostility performed the worst on tests of memory and thinking skills.

The study only shows a link between hostility and poor cognitive skills, not necessarily that one causes the other.

Dr Launer said:

“If this link is found in other studies, it will be important to understand whether these personality traits are amenable to change that would lead to interventions that promote positive social interactions and coping skills to see if they could play a role in reducing people’s risk for memory and thinking problems in middle age.”

The study was published in the journal Neurology (White et al., 2016).

Image credit: Atos