dementia views you can use: November 2018

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Is Alzheimer's an infection?

NAPLES, FLORIDA – More than 1,000 infectious disease specialists attending IDWeek 2018 (Infectious Disease Week 2018) in San Francisco feel it is time for deeper research into the triggering role infectious agents play in triggering and accelerating Alzheimer’s disease, said Leslie Norins, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of Alzheimer’s Germ Quest, Inc., upon his return from the conference.

Dr. Norins based his conclusion on conversations with attendees and the number of copies of his White Paper “It’s Time to Find the Alzheimer’s Germ” which were taken by attendees at the conference, the leading annual gathering of clinicians and researchers who focus on infectious diseases. “Many also told us they had privately noticed similarities between Alzheimer’s and various less-common infections, but there had been no channels through which to express this growing awareness.”

He explained that evidence for infectious triggers of Alzheimer’s has been published over the years but this possibility has been largely ignored by research funders in government and advocacy groups. They instead favored studies of the amyloid plaques and tau tangles which are prevalent in Alzheimer’s brains.

“Day versus night,” was how Dr. Norins compares the IDweek interest to that he observed at the “AAIC” Alzheimer’s conference in Chicago a few weeks earlier. He attributed this difference to the fact that while existing "ALZ" researchers are well versed in neurology and neuroscience, few are expert in the clinical and lab aspects of infectious diseases.

He says there’s a new wave of Alzheimer’s interest rising in the infectious diseases community, especially since after decades of research and billions of dollars spent on amyloid plaques and tau the root cause of the killer disease remains a mystery and there is still no drug to cure it.

The Foundation of the Infectious Diseases Society of America is currently offering two grants for research on infectious causation of Alzheimer’s, funded by Alzheimer’s Germ Quest.

SOURCE:

Alzheimer’s Germ Quest, Inc. is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Naples Florida, devoted to widening and accelerating research into infectious agents as triggers for Alzheimer’s disease. It is self-funded, and neither solicits nor accepts outside donations.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Dementia help-Deep sleep

MINNEAPOLIS – People who have sleep apnea or spend less time in deep sleep may be more likely to have changes in the brain that are associated with dementia, according to a new study published in the December 2014 online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Researchers studied people who don’t have as much oxygen in their blood during sleep, which occurs with sleep apnea and conditions such as emphysema.

The study found such people are more likely to have tiny abnormalities in brain tissue, called micro infarcts, than people with higher levels of oxygen in the blood.

These abnormalities are associated with the development of vascular dementia.

n addition, people who spent less time in deep sleep, called slow wave sleep, were more likely to have loss of brain cells than people who spent more time in slow wave sleep. Slow wave sleep is important in processing new memories and remembering facts. People tend to spend less time in slow wave sleep as they age. Loss of brain cells is also associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

For the study, 167 Japanese American men had sleep tests conducted in their homes when they were an average age of 84. All were followed until they died an average of six years later, and autopsies were conducted on their brains to look for micro infarcts, loss of brain cells, the plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy bodies found in Lewy body dementia.

The researchers divided the participants into four groups based on the percentage of time spent with lower than normal blood oxygen levels during sleep, with the lowest group spending 13 percent of their time or less with low oxygen levels and the highest group spending 72 to 99 percent of the night with low oxygen levels. Each group had 41 or 42 men. Of the 41 men in the lowest group, four had micro infarcts in the brain, while 14 of the 42 men in the highest group had the abnormalities, making them nearly four times more likely to have brain damage.
Previous studies have also shown a link between sleep stages and dementia. For this study, the participants were again divided into four groups based on the percentage of the night spent in slow wave sleep. Of the 37 men who spent the least time in slow wave sleep, 17 had brain cell loss, compared to seven of the 38 men who spent the most time in slow wave sleep.

The results remained the same after adjusting for factors such as smoking and body mass index and after excluding participants who had died early in the follow-up period and those who had low scores on cognitive tests at the beginning of the study.

Therapy for Memory:
Tranquil Sounds for Sleep
Amazon.com

“These findings suggest that low blood oxygen levels and reduced slow wave sleep may contribute to the processes that lead to cognitive decline and dementia,” said study author Rebecca P. Gelber, MD, DrPH, of the VA Pacific Islands Health Care System and the Pacific Health Research and Education Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii. “More research is needed to determine how slow wave sleep may play a restorative role in brain function and whether preventing low blood oxygen levels may reduce the risk of dementia.”

Gelber noted that a previous study showed that use of a continuous positive airway pressure machine (CPAP) for obstructive sleep apnea may improve cognition, even after dementia has developed.

There was no association between the sleep measures and the level of plaques and tangles.

For the United States NIH Infograph on getting better sleep, see:
Sleep Disorders & Insufficient Sleep: Improving Health through Research

MORE INFORMATION:

The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s Association, Hawaii Community Foundation and Department of Veterans Affairs Pacific Islands Health Care System. To learn more about sleep and brain health, please visit www.aan.com/patients.

The American Academy of Neurology, an association of more than 28,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, concussion, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

True Alzheimer's story-Where have you been?

Caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

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

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter
The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care professionals to get an easyceu or two

Jon Vezner

When Kathy Mattea first sang, "Where've You Been", she wondered to herself, "Do people want to hear this on the way to work?" To her surprise, radio stations could not play it often enough, as the song struck a deep chord in millions of people. It became the world's 1st song about dementia to top pop-music charts. It won Song of the Year at the Grammys, CMAs and ACMs.

This song was written by Jon Vezner who later became Kathy Mattea's husband. He wrote the song about his grandparents, after personally witnessing the scene depicted in the last verse of the song. Kathy Mattea recalled later that when he told her the story, he could barely speak without crying. Eventually he wrote a song about the incident and played it for her after the #1 party for her hit, "Goin' Gone."

Kathy Mattea recalls: "We went upstairs to the listening room, and when the first chorus went down, my head spun around. I knew the story, and I couldn't believe he wrote it in a song." Several artists were approached to record the song and everyone turned it down, saying that no one would be able to sing the song without crying. Eventually Kathy Mattea agreed to record the song.

Says Kathy Mattea: "The song is a true story about Jon's grandparents. They had both gotten very sick and were in the same hospital, but didn't know it. His grandmother had been slowly losing it, and she didn't recognize anybody. She was in unfamiliar surroundings, so she finally quit talking altogether. Jon was there visiting, and he was up seeing his grandfather; he said to the nurse, 'Has anybody brought him down to see her?' She said, 'no,' and he asked if he could do that. They said yes, so he wheeled his grandfather into his grandmother's room. His grandfather kept stroking her hair, saying, 'Look at her hair, nobody has hair like grandma,' and she looked at him and said, 'Where have you been?' It was the first thing she had said in weeks.

"When Jon told me the story for the first time, it was before we had even gotten engaged, and he just cried and cried. When he played the song for me and the first chorus came around, I knew where he was going with the lyric, and I just couldn't believe he could be that vulnerable as a writer, to put that moment in a song."

The song was Matteas biggest hit, winning her a Grammy. It also won Song of the Year at the Grammys, CMAs and ACMs. While Mattea had wondered to herself, "Do people want to hear this on the way to work?," the song struck a deep chord, and it was the first time Alzheimer's had been captured in a mainstream hit song

Lyrics

Where've You Been?

Claire had all but given up
when she and Edwin fell in love.
She touched his face and shook her head.
In disbelief, she sighed and said,
"In many dreams I've held you near.
Now at last you're really here!"

"Where have you been?
I've looked for you forever and a day.
Where have you been?
I'm just not myself when you're away."

He asked her for her hand for life,
and she became a salesman's wife.
He was home each night by eight,
but one stormy evening he was late.
Her frightened tears fell to the floor,
until his key turned in the door...

"Where have you been?
I've looked for you forever and a day.
Where have you been?
I'm just not myself when you're away."

They never spent a night apart.
For sixty years she heard him snore.
Now they're in a hospital,
in separate beds on different floors.

Claire soon lost her memory,
forgot the names of family.
She never spoke a word again.
Then one day they wheeled him in.
He held her hand and stroked her head,
and in a fragile voice she said...

"Where have you been?
I've looked for you forever and a day.
Where have you been?
I'm just not myself when you're away...
No, I'm just not myself when you're away."

Friday, November 23, 2018

Alzheimer's and daffodils

Farming has been the economic backbone of rural Wales for hundreds of years, with sheep farming accounting for the overwhelming majority of Welsh agriculture.

But the industry is now in crisis due to falling prices, high costs and changing weather conditions.

The Stephens family have been farming in Powys for 5 generations.

"I was born into it, it's my life, it's what I've done all my life and it's what my parents did. I just continued afterwards. Farming isn't so much a business. If it was a business, you wouldn't do it.

It's not even so much a way of life it's just who you are.

The cost of everything is going up; fertiliser, straw, feed, all going up, and the prices we're getting paid are going down".

When 24 year old Mark decided he wanted to take on the family farm, Kevin realised that they would have to diversify from traditional methods to survive. I was casting around trying to find a way for him to make a living, raise a family on a hill farm in Mid Wales.

In 2007, Kevin read an article about Professor Trevor Walker, who was looking at ways to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's after his friend's wife had been diagnosed.

The professor discovered that daffodils grown under special conditions above 1,000 ft in the Welsh mountains produce a lot more of this alkaloid called galanthamine, which is an approved Alzheimer's drug, than daffodils grown anywhere else.

There is, with Alzheimer's disease, an enzyme imbalance in the brain. But galanthamine in the body creates the opposite enzyme imbalance in the brain so if you get the dosage of galanthamine right, it restores the equilibrium.

Kevin saw an opportunity to help his son. He contacted the professor and they teamed up to develop a unique way of harvesting daffodils on the hill farm, without disrupting their livestock.

Kevin is now producing enough galanthamine to help 9,000 Alzheimer's patients.

"When we started down this route, most people thought we were completely nuts.

As we've got further through the process and proven what we're saying, it's starting to get some credibility and people are taking us seriously now.

The way this project is shaping up we will be able to produce galathamine on hill farms across Wales and beyond which will have a significant positive impact on farm incomes as well as producing galanthamine for an Alzheimer's population that is desperately in need of it, and generating jobs for the people involved in the process and in production of galanthamine.

We now have a commercial crop which should give him the opportunity to have a commercial future on this farm and allow him to raise his family and future generations here".

SOURCE:

Innovate UK

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Best Alzheimer's PET scan

Until recently, the hardest part in diagnosing Alzheimer's was the difficulty in "seeing" what was going on in the brain. F18 PET scans changed all that, allowing doctors to "see" how much Alzheimer's plaque, if any, appeared in the brain.
When the first F18 tests hit the market, they cost a few thousand dollars and were available from only one source. Since then, there has been a rush of activity on the part of pharmaceutical companies to bring better and less expensive F18 tests to market.

The first F18 test to detect brain amyloid deposits (also known as Alzheimer's plaques)was approved by the FDA in 2012. It was called Florbetapir F18 (renamed AMYViD™).

F18 tests approved by the FDA include:

Generic Name	Brand Name
Flutemetamol F18	Vizamyl™
Florbetaben F18	Neuraceq™
Florbetapir F18	AMYViD™

A Closer Look at Florbetapir F18

Seeing the amount of Alzheimer's plaque provides doctors with useful information on treatment and further testing for patients with cognitive impairment, according to the study published online by the journal Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

Positron emission tomography (PET) scans "light up" the florbetapir F18 biomarker to show amyloid plaques in the brain — a characteristic feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

"Amyloid imaging results altered physicians' diagnostic thinking, intended testing and management of patients undergoing evaluation for cognitive decline," according to the study by Dr. Mark Mintun of Avid Pharmaceuticals, Philadelphia, and colleagues.

Is It Alzheimer's? Florbetapir Provides Evidence

The researchers designed a "real-world" study to determine how florbetapir would affect clinical management of patients with cognitive impairment. While a florbetapir PET scan showing amyloid plaques doesn't prove that AD is present, it provides a previously unavailable piece of evidence to support the diagnosis.

The study included 229 patients seen by neurologists or other specialists for evaluation of cognitive decline or impairment of uncertain etiology. Before the florbetapir PET scan, doctors provided a provisional diagnosis, an estimate of their diagnostic confidence, and their plans for further testing and treatment. The goal was to assess the value of florbetapir PET in making the final diagnosis and in providing doctors with useful information for clinical decision making.

The florbetapir PET scans showed amyloid deposits in 113 out of 229 patients. The information provided led doctors to change their diagnosis in 55 percent of cases.

When the provisional diagnosis was AD, imaging results led to a change in diagnosis in 37 percent of cases. When the pre-scan diagnosis was either “indeterminate” or another cause of dementia, the diagnosis changed in over 60 percent of cases. In either direction, the scans increased the physicians' ratings of diagnostic confidence by about 20 percent.

Impact on Treatment and Testing Decisions

Florbetapir PET also provided useful information for treatment decision-making: in 87 percent of patients, the results contributed to at least one change in the treatment plan. The main impact was in deciding whether or not to use medications that are helpful in AD. The scan results also affected decisions on further testing—in many cases, physicians dropped plans to perform additional brain imaging studies or neuropsychological tests.

Alzheimer disease is the most common cause of dementia, but the diagnosis can be challenging to make. The only definitive way to diagnose AD is by autopsy examination of the brain after death. Up to 20 percent of patients diagnosed with AD turn out not to have had AD on autopsy, while up to 40 percent of patients diagnosed with other causes of dementia have evidence of AD at autopsy.

Florbetapir PET is the first FDA-approved imaging that can estimate amyloid deposits in the brain of a living patient. Previous studies have shown that the scans are accurate in identifying patients later shown to have AD at autopsy.

The new results show that florbetapir PET scans can have a significant effect in "real world" clinical evaluation of patients with cognitive impairment. By strengthening the case for or against a diagnosis of AD, this test can have a significant impact on patient management—particularly related to the use of AD medications and the need for further testing. Additional studies will be needed to confirm whether "clinical care that includes amyloid imaging will translate into better outcomes" for patients with cognitive impairment and possible AD.

About Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders

Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders is a leading international forum for reports of new research findings and new approaches to diagnosis and treatment. Contributions fall within all relevant scientific fields and clinical specialties, including neurobiology, neurochemistry, molecular biology, neurology, neuropathology, neuropsychology, psychiatry, gerontology, and geriatrics.

About Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is a leading international publisher of trusted content delivered in innovative ways to practitioners, professionals and students to learn new skills, stay current on their practice, and make important decisions to improve patient care and clinical outcomes. LWW is part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information, business intelligence and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry. Wolters Kluwer Health is part of Wolters Kluwer, a market-leading global information services company with 2011 annual revenues of €3.4 billion ($4.7 billion).

Monday, November 19, 2018

Anti-dementia recipe

Ingredients

3 green tea teabags
1 cup quick-cooking pearled barley
3 cups ½-inch diced butternut squash (12 ounces)
2 teaspoons Madras curry powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese
1/4 cup sliced unblanched almonds, toasted

Directions

Boil 3 cups of water with green tea bags.
Turn off heat and let tea bags steep for 5 minutes.
Remove and discard tea bags.
Meanwhile, toast barley in a dry sauté pan or deep skillet over medium-high heat 2 to 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add squash, 1 cup of the tea, curry and salt.
Simmer for 3-4 minutes until tea is absorbed.
Stir frequently.
Add additional tea by cupfuls, simmering until tea is absorbed before adding additional liquid. This should take 12 to 14 minutes.
When barley and squash are tender and all tea has been incorporated, remove from heat.
Stir in goat cheese until melted and creamy.
Serve and top with almonds.

SOURCE:
Mediterranean Diet Wiki
Chef MD

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Alzheimer's-What is the best way to fight it?t

Cleveland Clinic

A growing body of research shows there are many ways to lower Alzheimer's risk. What are they? Which one is best? See what Cleveland Clinic's Aging Survey revealed.

Thirty men and women ages 59-69 were put through treadmill fitness assessments and ultrasounds of the heart. Then they received brain scans to look for blood flow to certain areas of the brain.

"We set out to characterize the relationship between heart function, fitness, and cerebral blood flow, which no other study had explored to date," Johnson said. "In other words, if you're in good physical shape, does that improve blood flow to critical areas of the brain? And does that improved blood flow provide some form of protection from dementia?"

The results showed blood flow to critical areas of the brain - and so the supply of oxygen and vital nutrients - was higher in those who were more physically fit.

In layman's terms, this study demonstrates that regular exercise at any age could keep the mind young, according to Johnson.

"Can we prove irrefutably that increased fitness will prevent Alzheimer's disease? Not at this point," Johnson said. "But this is an important first step towards demonstrating that being physically active improves blood flow to the brain and confers some protection from dementia, and conversely that people who live sedentary lifestyles, especially those who are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's, might be more susceptible."

Since people who exercise frequently often have reduced arterial stiffness, Johnson and his group postulate that regular physical activity - regardless of age - maintains the integrity of the "pipes" that carry blood to the brain.

"In the mid-late 20th century, much of the research into dementias like Alzheimer's focused on vascular contributions to disease, but the discovery of amyloid plaques and tangles took prevailing research in a different direction" Johnson said. "Research like this heralds a return to the exploration of the ways the vascular system contributes to the disease process."

SOURCE:

Cleveland Clinic
Johnson's research, which was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health CTSA (UL1TR000117) and the University of Kentucky's Clinical Services Core, was published in NeuroImage.