'Absent Impressions' sheds light on relentless slide into dementia

Artist's impression of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias
mlive.com
by Grayce Scholt | Contributing writer
Grand Blanc artist James Shurter explores his perception of his mother's loss of memory as she experiences the ravages of dementia in an exhibit titled "Absent Impressions" at Mott Community College's Fine Arts Gallery.

Upon entering the gallery, viewers are confronted with "Fragments," two large transparent panels hanging from above that are covered with jumbles of letters, numbers and parts of words.

They lead to "Ephemeral," a powerful video installation that dominates the exhibit.

It shows the diffused face of a woman as she moves almost imperceptibly, but certainly, through five transformations. It's as if the woman is trying to decipher the jumbled letters and numbers in front of her that never come together, that never make sense.

Shurter said this is his visual representation of a person who is experiencing Alzheimer's or another dementia's unalterable confusion.....read the whole story

Barack Obama campaign is running false promise of Alzheimer's cure

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The radio ad the Barack Obama campaign is running that falsely accuses John McCain of opposing stem cell research and misleads listeners on the best hope for diabetes patients has another problem. The ad promises cures for Alzheimer’s even though leading scientists say the disease likely won't benefit.

"Stem cell research could unlock cures for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s, too. But John McCain has stood in the way ... he's opposed stem cell research," the ad claims.

However, leading scientists say that embryonic stem cell research will likely never yield a cure for Alzheimer's.

"Alzheimer's is a more global disease, with an effect on numerous kinds of cells," Steve Stice, a stem cell researcher at the University of Georgia, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper previously. "That makes it much more difficult for a cell therapy to be effective."

In a patient afflicted with Alzheimer's, clumps of protein called amyloid build up within the brain and begin attacking various types of cells and the connections between cells.

Other researchers agree that potential cures, if they come about, won't happen soon.

"I think the chance of doing repairs to Alzheimer's brains by putting in.....read the whole article

Carnosine fights brain disease including Alzheimers

Foodconsumer.org
By Ben Wasserman
Diet Health : Nutrition

Chinese scientists reviewed studies and said carnosine or beta-alanyl-L-histidine found in animal tissue such as brain and skeletal muscle tissue can help fight many disease of central nervous system including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and cerebral ischemic diseases.

The authors said carnosine....read the whole story

Consumer-friendly Health Site

Scientist uses reprogrammed cells to study Alzheimer’s

JS ONLINE: NEWS: WISCONSIN:
By MARK JOHNSON
Madison - Ten months after scientists in Madison and Japan reprogrammed human skin cells back to an embryonic state, Lawrence Goldstein of the University of California-San Diego is collecting skin samples from patients with Alzheimer's disease and hoping the new technique will offer a unique window into the disease.

Previously, scientists often had to rely on animal models to research a disease such as Alzheimer’s.

“We have worn out what we can do with animal models,” Goldstein told the World Stem Cell Summit on Monday.

Goldstein’s work is part of a surge of stem cell research in the past year. But the new work has been accompanied by mounting expectations almost 10 years after James Thomson isolated the first human embryonic stem cells.

Now scientists can...read the whole article

British ethicist: Alzheimer's and Other Dementia patients should consider ending lives

USA Today
From Britain comes word that a leading medical ethicist is advocating that dementia sufferers think about ending their lives to ease the burden on their families and the national health service.

"If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives — your family's lives — and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service," Baroness Warnock, 84, said in an interview with Life and Work, the magazine of the Church of Scotland.

"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die."

Warnock, a longtime supporter of euthanasia, said.....read the whole story
I do not agree with this. What do you think?

Simple Blood Test Could Spot Alzheimer's Risk

Forbes
HealthDay News) -- A simple blood test to identify people at risk for Alzheimer's disease may be close at hand, according to researchers at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.
They found that blood plasma levels of a peptide called Amyloid Beta (AB42) appear to increase before the onset of Alzheimer's and decrease shortly after a person develops the disease, which may be because AB42 becomes trapped in the brain.

"To date, AB42 levels have measured most reliably in the cerebrospinal fluid, which is more difficult to collect than blood. Blood draws can be done with relative ease and greater frequency than spinal taps, which is typically the way cerebrospinal fluid is collected," study lead author Nicole Schupf, associate professor of clinical epidemiology, said in a Columbia news release.

The study was published online Sept. 8 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The finding is similar to that seen in heart attack patients, who...read the whole article

Could ECT Treatment Work for Those with Alzheimer's and Other Dementia-Related Pathological Yelling?

J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 20:379-380, August 2008
doi: 10.1176/appi.neuropsych.20.3.379
© 2008 American Neuropsychiatric Association

ECT Treatment for Two Cases of Dementia-Related Pathological Yelling

To the Editor: Current guidelines support the use of ECT in individuals with mood disorders unresponsive to pharmacologic treatments.1 Recently, ECT has been identified as an effective intervention for medication refractory verbal and physical agitation in patients with dementia, developmental disability, and traumatic brain injury.2,3 Behavioral dyscontrol presenting as verbal agitation (inappropriate vocalizations or chronic hollering unexplained by other causes) is a common and troublesome dementia-related condition and is difficult to manage in a long-term care setting.4 Among patients demonstrating extensive episodes of verbal agitation secondary to dementia or other underlying illnesses (namely major depression or bipolar mania), the primary intervention after the failure of nonpharmacological measures is the judicious use of evidence-based medications.5 ECT use is generally reserved for refractory circumstances or when medications are poorly tolerated.6 We report two cases of successful use of ECT for patients with dementia who demonstrated severe verbal agitation and presented no known previous history of major depressive or mood disorders.

Case 1
Ms. A is an 88-year-old woman with no previous psychiatric admissions and a 6-year history of probable Alzheimer’s disease dementia and Parkinson’s disease. She was transferred to the medical psychiatry unit from a nursing home...read the whole letter

Exercise vs Alzheimer's

—McClatchy Tribune newspapers
September 19, 2008
After putting 160 elderly volunteers through a battery of exercises, researchers at the University of Kansas School of Medicine say exercising and staying physically fit may slow the relentless, mind-robbing progress of Alzheimer's disease. "This offers hope for all of us," said KU neurologist Jeffrey Burns. "Exercise is cheap. Everybody can do it. If it does impact Alzheimer's disease, we should be treating people with exercise."

Implications
About 5.2 million Americans now live with Alzheimer's. By 2050, that number could swell to 11 million to 16 million. If ways can be found to postpone Alzheimer's by as little as two years, nearly 2 million cases of the disease could be avoided.

Brain shrinkage
Burns and his colleagues have found that brain shrinkage, an inevitable consequence of Alzheimer's, was less pronounced in people who had the disease and were physically fit. By doing scans that.....read the whole article

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Once again I ask,"Are you an Alzheimer's advocate yet?"

Alzheimer Advocacy Team
Alzheimer research funding will remain stalled at approximately $644 million for the next few months. There are only days left until Congress adjourns and Congressional leaders have decided that work on the annual appropriations bills for fiscal year 2009 (which begins Oct. 1, 2008) will be postponed until after the election.

Congress will pass a “continuing resolution” (CR) to temporarily fund all federal government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at 2008 levels. The CR will also fund programs that support Alzheimer caregivers (see chart below).

The Congressional schedule beyond September is unclear at this point. Congress may convene after November 4 to deal with unfinished business including passing another “continuing resolution” to keep the government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at 2008 levels. The CR will also fund programs that support Alzheimer caregivers (see chart below).

The Congressional schedule beyond September is unclear at this point. Congress may convene after November 4 to deal with unfinished business including passing another “continuing resolution” to keep the government operating through early 2009. It is also possible that lawmakers could use a “lame duck session” to finish work on funding approved by the Appropriations Committees in July 2008

You can help by joining the Members Projest
click
here to learn about it anf make a difference

You can become an Alzheimers Advocate by clicking here

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2008) — Investigators at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) announced a link between the brain protein KIBRA and Alzheimer's disease, a discovery that could lead to promising new treatments for this memory-robbing disorder.

The new discovery builds on a previous TGen-led study published in the journal Science, which showed a genetic link between KIBRA and memory in healthy adults.

In the new study, TGen researchers found that carriers of a memory-enhancing flavor of the KIBRA gene had a 25 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

The findings were reported ....read the whole article

Why You Should Embrace World Alzheimer's Day on, Sunday, September 21

PRlog
Sep 16, 2008
What do you know about Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias?

How can you decrease your chances of getting thesread the whole articlee disease?

How can you help someone with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia?

This year’s theme is "No time to lose" with a focus this year on caregivers by emphasising and celebrating the contribution they make to society and giving them the recognition they deserve!

Yes, there is an urgency for all to learn about these diseases and do what they can to prevent them in themselves. Also legislators need to be...read the whole article

Expression of CD74 is increased in neurofibrillary tangles in Alzheimer's disease

7thSpaceInteractive

Alzheimer disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by progressive memory loss. Pathological markers of AD include neurofibrillary tangles, accumulation of amyloid-beta plaques, neuronal loss, and inflammation.

The exact events that lead to the neuronal dysfunction and loss are not completely understood. However, pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-1beta, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor alpha, are increased in AD, along with gene expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules and macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF).

MHC class II molecules are found in microglia of the brain, while MIF is found in both microglia and neurons of the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and cortex. MIF is not only a lymphocyte mediator but also a pituitary factor with endocrine properties and can mediate phosphorylation of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase-1/2 MAP kinases pathway.

In this study, we looked at CD74, an integral membrane protein that acts....read the whole article
I realize it is a little technical. Perhaps it will give you some idea of what we are dealing with

New project uses nanoparticles to tackle Alzheimer's disease

CordisNews
A new EU-funded project is exploring the use of nanoparticles in the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The five-year NAD ('Nanoparticles for the therapy and diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease') initiative has a budget of €14.6 million and is financed by the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). It brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines working in 19 organisations in 13 countries.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia: of Europe's five million dementia sufferers, over half have a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. These figures are likely to rise dramatically as the population ages. The condition is caused by the accumulation in the brain of plaques made up of beta-amyloid peptide molecules. These plaques cause the nerve cells to degenerate.

Symptoms of Alzheimer's include confusion, memory loss and mood swings. As yet, there is no cure for the condition, although some drugs exist that are able to slow the progression of the disease in some patients.

'Somewhere in the world there is a new case of dementia diagnosed every seven seconds. The majority of these people are suffering from Alzheimer's disease,' said Professor David Allsop of Lancaster University in the UK, one of the project partners. 'But despite great progress in the scientific field, which has made interpretation of the molecular bases of the disease possible, so far there has been little progress in improved diagnosis and therapy.'

The NAD project will design a range of nanoparticles that are...Read the whole article

High praise for the for Mediterranean Diet

By Kelley Colihan
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Sept. 11, 2008 -- More accolades are being heaped on the Mediterranean diet. This time, researchers say the diet may actually help prevent certain chronic diseases. such as Alzheimer's disease and related dementias as well as others.

A review of studies, led by the University of Florence's Francesco Sofi, looks at what role a Mediterranean diet played in the primary prevention of diseases

Researchers cobbled together 12 studies representing more than 1.5 million people who were followed from three to 18 years.

They gave people a score of 0 points for a low adherence to the Mediterranean diet and 7 to 9 points maximum for those who followed it religiously.

Mediterranean Diet and Disease
The researchers found that people who followed a strict Mediterranean diet were:

9% less likely to die from heart disease or other cardiovascular problems
6% less likely to develop cancer or die from it
13% less likely to have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease

The Mediterranean diet was....read the whole article

Blood Marker Predicts Alzheimer's

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
High blood levels of a plaque peptide may predict Alzheimer's disease in elderly people.

The finding comes from a study of 1,125 people who were in their late 70s when their blood was first tested. Four and a half years later, 104 of them had Alzheimer's disease.

Those with the highest blood levels of A-beta 42, a major component of the plaque that clogs the brains of Alzheimer's patients, were far more likely to get Alzheimer's than were those with the lowest A-beta 42 levels.

"Compared with individuals with low [blood] A-beta 42 levels at baseline, those with high A-beta 42 levels had more than a threefold increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease over an average of...read the whole article

Expertise counts with deep brain stimulation

Chicago Tribune
Judith Graham

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Expertise counts with deep brain stimulation
With deep brain stimulation, as with many complicated medical procedures, it’s important to evaluate the expertise of physicians and hospitals before signing up as a patient.

This expensive treatment—it costs up to $150,000 or more--is now being offered by more than 300 medical centers across the U.S.

In a story today, I examine how physicians and scientists are exploring the use of the therapy for a variety of neurological and psychological conditions.

Currently, deep brain stimulation is approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for use in patients with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor. Patients with dystonia can also get the treatment under a FDA humanitarian device exemption.

Hospitals’ experience with this therapy varies widely. Some centers treat up to 100 or more patients a year; others treat only a handful.

Some medical centers do extraordinarily careful workups to identify patients most likely to benefit from deep brain stimulation; others don’t.

Not all physicians carefully monitor patients who’ve had the procedure to make sure they’re deriving the maximum possible benefit.

And not all surgeons are expert at placing electrodes at exactly the right spot in the brains of patients. If the electrode is 1 or 2 millimeters off target.....read the rest of the story and comments

Deep Brain Stimulation Inexplicably Restores Vivid Memories

Natural News.com

Scientists searching for a way to suppress appetite accidentally discovered a way to trigger vivid memories. The researchers hope to develop the technique into a treatment for Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in Annals of Neurology.

Researchers at the Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada, were operating on an obese man in an attempt to find a part of the brain that could suppress the appetite when stimulated electrically. When the scientists stimulated the hypothalamus, which has been associated with hunger, the man suddenly experienced a vivid memory from 30 years before.

"He reported the experience of.....read the whole article

Brain Cells 'Supercharged' To Attack Plaques That Cause Alzheimer’s Disease

Science Daily
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have discovered a new method for developing treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). They have shown that by stimulating a brain cell called a microglia the cells will partially engulf the senile plaques which are abundant in post mortem AD brain.

The study, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, marks the first time that this phenomenon, believed to take place in living brain, has been duplicated in the laboratory. It offers a new....... read the whole story by clicking here

Exercise can slow memory loss in progress

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professinals,

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here are more interesting dementiaarticles and activities,

ABC7Chicago

Now a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds exercise can even slow down memory loss in those that are already having difficulty.(Alzheimers)
Doctors followed 170 seniors with mild memory problems. Half were encouraged to exercise a couple hours per week while the other half kept to their normal activities.

Most of the participants in the exercise program chose walking, and after six months they had .... read more of Exercise can slow memory loss in progress

Fatal Protein Interactions May Explain Neurological Diseases

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2008) — In a collaborative study at the University of California, San Diego, investigators from neurosciences, chemistry and medicine, as well as the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have investigated how proteins involved in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease interact to form unique complexes. Their findings explain why Alzheimer's patients might develop Parkinson's, and vice versa.

The new and unique molecular structures they discovered can now be used to model and develop new drugs for these devastating neurological diseases. Their findings will be published in the September 3 issue of Public....

read the whole article

Brain injury study adds to Alzheimer's enigma

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Levels of a protein linked with Alzheimer's disease rise as people recover from brain injuries – a surprising finding that may help explain why injuries boost the risk of developing the disease, U.S. and Italian researchers said on Thursday. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Milan did hour-by-hour measurements of the protein amyloid beta in 18 patients with severe brain injury as they were coming out of a coma

To read more heath news click here

To read the whole story by Julie Steenhuysen click here