Nutritional drink, imaging show promise for Alzheimer's (part 2)

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(CNN)

Scanning for the earliest signs

While the Souvenaid study focused on the loss of synapses as the mechanism behind Alzheimer's symptoms, an Italian group is working on identifying a different marker of the condition.

In a study published in the journal Neurology, researchers showed that a kind of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging may pick up signs of Alzheimer's in healthy elderly individuals.

Lead author Dr. Giovanni Carlesimo, of Tor Vergata University and the Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, Italy, said the findings are preliminary but could be useful for future drug therapies to target the specific brain changes shown on the scan.

Researchers looked at the hippocampus, the brain structure associated with memory. They found that the mean diffusivity of the hippocampus -- a measure of how water is distributed within the tissues -- was correlated with how well participants performed on tests of verbal and visual-spatial memory.

The mean diffusivity in the hippocampus, as reflected in this brain scan, could represent some of the earliest structural changes that occur in the early stages of Alzheimer's, researchers say.

The research was done on 76 healthy people ages 20 to 80. The effect was most pronounced in the over-50-year-olds, the scientists reported.

The study is an important demonstration that MRI can be used to understand age-associated changes in the brain, said Adam Brickman, assistant professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Medical Center.

But Brickman cautioned that this does not mean everyone should request this test.

"This might be something that will be useful down the road, but it's not diagnostic right now," he said.

Nutritional drink, imaging show promise for Alzheimer's

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 dementia brain boosting Corrier-journal.comactivities

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(CNN) -- Doctors are already good at diagnosing Alzheimer's disease in a patient with obvious symptoms, which include memory loss, vision problems and confusion. But the cutting-edge research is looking for the brain mechanisms of the condition at its earliest stages, maximizing the potential for intervention.

Two studies published this week that may help pave the way for better treatments for people with Alzheimer's, which affects as many as 5.3 million Americans, according to the Alzheimer's Association. One is a drink that you may one day be able to pick up at the pharmacy; the other is a detection method.

Drink to your health?

One of the features of a brain with Alzheimer's disease is the loss of synapses, which are junctions between two neurons or between a neuron and a muscle. Research suggests some connection between low numbers of synapses in a person's brain and Alzheimer's symptoms such as memory impairment and language deterioration.

Scientists have developed a drink called Souvenaid that is a "medical food," meaning it's taken under the guidance of a physician to manage a specific condition. The drink has three components -- uridine, choline, and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA -- that, working together, help restore synapses, said Dr. Richard Wurtman, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of the study. Uridine is a molecule used in the genetic coding for RNA, choline is in the vitamin B family, and DHA is found in certain fish and fish oils.

These nutrients are already found in the human body and have been shown to be safe, he said. But taking a supplement of any one of them will not have the same beneficial effect, he said. Together in the right proportions, the cocktail increases the production of fatty constituents and proteins needed for synapses.

The study looked at 225 patients who had mild Alzheimer's, according to an examination. Some took Souvenaid, and the control group participants received a non-medical drink, once a day for 12 weeks.

They found that patients showed significant improvement in the delayed verbal recall task, in which participants were asked to remember what they had been told earlier. The idea is that the formation of synapses delays the symptoms of Alzheimer's, but it is not a cure, experts said.

"There was a clear difference. The difference was greatest in people with very mild but quite real Alzheimer's," he said.

The product may be commercialized as early as next year, Nigel Hughes, general manager of Nutricia America. Nutricia is a unit of the international food giant Danone (Dannon in the United States), for which Wurtman is also a consultant.

There are other clinical studies of Souvenaid going on of 500 participants each, and the company plans to do an "early experience program" of selling the product in a small geographic area in the United States, having it available in pharmacies, he said.

Although the product has been shown to be safe, there is no evidence whatsoever that it should be taken by anyone who does not have mild or early stage Alzheimer's disease, Hughes said.

Early Alzheimer's patients drinking the combination of these nutrients is akin to pregnant women taking folic acid supplements, Wurtman said. It's not that they are deficient in these nutrients, but the addition of more of them carries benefits, he said.

Yian Gu, postdoctoral researcher in neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, who studies the relationship between diet and Alzheimer's, said the study looks promising if the claims of memory improvement hold up, but noted that further research should be done to confirm those results. There should also be comparisons with nutritional supplements currently available on the market, such as multivitamins and fish oil, Gu said.

There were also cognitive and memory tasks that the drink did not seem to improve, according to the study, and the researchers should look further into what other improvements can be seen besides the verbal recall finding, Gu said.

The study is published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia.

Not all the news on Alzheimer's treatments is positive. Patients in a phase III trial for tarenflurbil, a drug that showed promise in an earlier phase II trial, did not experience improvement in cognition or daily function compared with those who received a placebo, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Progress being made in early detection of Alzheimer’s disease

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Nashua Telegraph

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can start assaulting brain cells many years before any outward signs of the damage are displayed.

That makes it difficult for doctors trying to come up with early diagnosis and possible interventions for millions of Americans.

Until recently, assorted memory and mental-processing tests were about the only tools doctors had to determine the onset of dementia, and it’s often hard to distinguish whether the problem is caused by the tangles and plaque buildup of Alzheimer’s, a stroke or some other medical condition, or even an adverse drug reaction.

Scientists have worked with some general measurements of brain-volume loss as a marker for disease, but without much precision. Over the last several years, though, researchers have begun to make strides using various brain-imaging tools to look at structures inside the skull.

Working through data compiled by numerous participants in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, scientists have made enough comparisons between images from scans and autopsies to start to understand what changes in the size or even energy consumption of different parts of the brain might mean.

One team at the University of California, San Diego, recently reported a fairly quick way to identify Alzheimer’s progression using magnetic resonance imaging.

The researchers found that changes in the brain’s memory regions, particularly a part of the temporal lobe called the entorhinal cortex, offer sensitive measures of early stages of the disease.

“The technique is extremely powerful, because it allows a researcher to examine exactly how much brain-volume loss has occurred in each region of the brain, including the cortical regions, where we know the bad proteins of Alzheimer’s disease build up,” said Dr. James Brewer, a neurologist and co-author of a study reporting the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The scientists say the imaging markers not only track brain atrophy, “but distinguish the early states of Alzheimer’s disease from changes related to normal aging,’’ said Anders Dale, the professor of neuroscience and radiology who led the project.

Another group, at Washington University in St. Louis, moved detection ahead still further in mid-December with studies that show people with measurable levels of a protein associated with Alzheimer’s are at greater risk of developing the disease and for losing brain volume later on.

One project, done from 2004-08, tracked 159 volunteers ages 51-88 with no sign of cognitive impairment using scans that can detect the protein beta-amyloid in the brain, as well as MRIs to measure brain volume and standard memory and thinking tests.

Over time, 23 of the subjects developed mild cognitive impairment and nine were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. All had relatively high levels of the protein compared with subjects who remained cognitively normal, but so, too, did some who didn’t become impaired.

Another study, of 135 volunteers ages 65-88, found that levels of the protein matched atrophy of brain regions associated with memory, and declining scores in thinking and memory tests over many years. The findings were published in the Archives of Neurology.

“These studies confirm the value of detecting and measuring amyloid load in the brains of living people as soon as possible,’’ said Dr. John Morris, who led one of the studies and heads the university’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Meanwhile, neurologists at Penn State’s Hershey College of Medicine compared videos of walking movements of a small group of volunteers to those of a group diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and found that the extent to which one arm swings versus the other while walking could represent a very early sign of the disease. The asymmetry in arm movement was much more noticeable in the subjects with Parkinson’s.

“Our data suggests this could be a very useful tool for early detection,’’ said Xuemei Huang, lead author of the report published in the journal Gait and Posture.

Such early diagnosis could be useful if widespread efforts to find drugs that can halt the death of dopamine-producing brain cells early in the course of Parkinson’s start to pay off, she said

Olive oil and dementia(part 2)

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Dronmore Leader

Where did the story come from?The research was carried out by Dr Jason Pitt and colleagues from the Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Western Illinois University and Rutgers University in the US and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

While the authors provide grant numbers for those that support their research, it is unclear what funding organisations provided these.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology.



What kind of scientific study was this?Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting around 420,000 people in the UK. It is a degenerative brain disorder. The exact causes aren’t well understood, but plagues and tangles made of proteins form around brain cells, eventually leading to their damage and death. This causes a range of symptoms that can include confusion, mood swings, poor memory and forgetfulness and more severe symptoms such as delusions or obsessive behaviour.

Research has demonstrated that certain fibres called Aß-derived diffusible ligands (ADDLs) in the brain are the main chemicals responsible for the initiation of Alzheimer’s disease. In this laboratory study, researchers explored the neuroprotective properties of a chemical called oleocanthal, which is derived from olive oil.

The researchers prepared ADDLs in the laboratory and investigated the effects of various concentrations of oleocanthal on these molecules. They assessed the effect of this extract on the primary molecules (monomers) that make up the ADDLs and also on the formed ADDLs (which are chains of monomers).

They also explored the effects of oleocanthal on nerve cells from the hippocampus, an area in the brain that plays an important role in memory and learning. The hippocampus is one of the areas in the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Previous research has established that ADDLs of a certain size can bind at the synapses (junctions between neurones in the brain) The loss of synaptic function that results is a crucial first step in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.



What were the results of the study?The study found that in the presence of the chemical oleocanthal, the ADDLs became more immunoreactive (i.e. more likely to provoke an immune response) and less soluble (which may lead to a decrease in toxicity).

When the chemical was applied to the brain cells, ADDLs formed in the presence of oleocanthal were less likely to bind to the synapses and this was accompanied by reduced deterioration of these cells.



What interpretations did the researchers draw from these results?The researchers say their results suggest that oleocanthal is capable of altering the chemicals implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and can also protect against the effects of these compounds on synapses in the brain. They say that this suggests oleocanthal may be a key compound in the development of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.



What does the NHS Knowledge Service make of this study?Previous research has indicated that phenols (a group of chemical compounds) such as oleocanthal may have neuroprotective properties, and this laboratory study has uncovered some of the complex reactions that may explain these effects.

More research is needed to establish exactly how it protects nerve cells, (for example, whether it actually reduces binding at the synapses or whether the protective effect is due to the changes in the structure of ADDLs that it causes).

The researchers report that, overall, their findings are consistent with other studies that have investigated phenolic compounds such as oleocanthal and demonstrated protective effects. This extract from olive oil and other similar molecules may have a role to play in future development of drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, but these will require further research and development. The drug development process is a long one, which starts with studies such as these in the laboratory and later move through animal testing to safety and efficacy studies in humans.

While the chemical being tested here - oleocanthal – is an extract from olive oil it has not been tested in humans with Alzheimer’s yet. Also, whether these particular effects will be derived from eating olive oil itself is not clear from these findings. Olive oil is likely to be part of a traditional Mediterranean diet, which is also high in vegetables, fruits and fish, and while there is some evidence that a Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease it is not clear what specific role olive oil has to play in these benefits. Only further studies can answer these questions.

Olive oil and Alzheimer's disease(part 1)

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 dementia brain boosting activities

Dronmore Leader

Olive oil could hold key to defeating Alzheimer's," reported the Daily Express. The newspaper reported that a compound found in the oil has been shown to slow down changes in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's disease. According to the paper, researchers believe that the antioxidant that gives the oil its 'peppery bite' will become a key ingredient in new drugs.

This laboratory study investigated the effects of an olive oil extract (oleocanthal) on chemicals thought to be involved in Alzheimer’s disease. It found that nerve cells exposed to oleocanthal were better protected from the effects of these potential neurotoxins.

However, this study does not indicate that increasing olive oil consumption will protect from Alzheimer’s disease. The olive oil extract and other similar molecules may have a role to play in future development of drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, but these will require considerable further research and development. It will be some time before the direct relevance of these findings to preventing Alzheimer’s are clear, but this is the first step in the process.

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