News reports of research into Alzheimer's disease July - December 2001
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There's a glossary of terms used in Alzheimer's research.
Disclaimer:
This section began as an offshoot of my
gathering of news items about memory. I am not a medical expert. My
background is in psychology. The information I have gathered here should
not be taken as providing any advice.
November 2001
A new
study by scientists in the Netherlands has found that middle-age
and elderly people who took anti-inflammatory drugs like
ibuprofen or naproxen for at least two years had a much reduced
likelihood of getting Alzheimer's. The effect applied only to
Alzheimer's, not other diseases associated with memory loss.
Aspirin did not appear to have the same effect, although that
may be due to the low doses taken. The study offers hope for
preventing Alzheimer's, but because the drugs have serious
(sometimes fatal) side effects, medical experts advise healthy
people to await the results of randomized trials now under way
before taking anti-inflammatory drugs other than aspirin in the
hope of preventing Alzheimer's.
The study was published in The New
England Journal of Medicine.
September 2001
A three-year study of 48 healthy
people from 60 to 80 years old, by New York University School of
Medicine researchers, predicted which healthy elderly men and
women would develop memory impairment based on scans of their
brains. At the beginning of the study, everyone scored within
the normal range on a battery of tests typically used to detect
early loss of memory and other mental skills. However, PET scans
revealed a reduction in glucose metabolism in an area of the
brain called the entorhinal cortex among 12 people. Three years
later, 11 of these people had experienced mild cognitive
impairment and one had developed Alzheimer's disease. "Our work
extends the use of PET scanning to identifying in normal aging
subjects the earliest metabolic abnormalities that may lead to
the memory losses referred to as mild cognitive impairment
(MCI). The diagnosis of MCI carries a high risk for future
Alzheimer's disease."
The study is published in the September 11 issue of
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-09/nyum-bps090701.htm
Reminyl (galantamine) may be effective in treating
dementia in patients with
cerebrovascular disease, such as stroke. Data from a study
presented at the XVII World Congress of Neurology show that
Reminyl improves memory, orientation and language skills of
patients with vascular dementia or a combination of Alzheimer's
disease and cerebrovascular disease ("mixed" dementia) for at
least 12 months. The results also showed that Reminyl improved
or maintained the ability of these individuals to perform normal
activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing and doing
housework. However, Reminyl is not yet approved for the
treatment of vascular dementia.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-06/K-DsnA-1806101.htm
A pan-Canadian team of
researchers designed, tested and validated the first
"Home-safety Assessment Scale for People with Dementia
Living at Home" (S.A.S.). The SAS has been tested and
validated among 175 patients in English and French, in both
urban and rural areas. "Thanks to the SAS, physicians,
nurses, family helpers, social workers, physiotherapists and
occupational therapists can now evaluate in a few minutes
the risks of accidents in any particular home."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-09/mu-nha091401.htm
NeuroGraph™, a portable device
that provides an almost instantaneous reading of brain
activity and can swiftly detect differences from the norm,
offers enormous commercial potential as a screening device
for Alzheimer’s disease. It might also be useful in
pharmaceutical trials, to test the efficacy of new drugs on
brain activity against drugs already on the market.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-09/oonr-da091901.htm
In a series of studies, a
growth factor (BDNF) was introduced into the adult
rat brain, and was found to produce new neurons in
various brain regions. BDNF is reduced in parts of the
brain of those with Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s
disease. These studies indicate that supplementing the
adult brain with BDNF not only supports neurons in those
brains, but also induces new neurons from precursor
cells.
The studies were reported in the September 1 issue of
The Journal of Neuroscience.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/sfn-nnm083101.htm
Several
studies presented at the Tenth Congress of the
International Psychogeriatric Association (IPA) assessed
the impact of Reminyl treatment on patient functioning
by exploring the resulting impact on time required of
family caregivers. One study of 435 patients from Europe
and Canada, focused on the time caregivers spent
supervising their family members or assisting them with
activities of daily living, such as dressing and
bathing. It was found that the time required to
supervise patients who received a placebo increased by
approximately two hours per day over the six months,
while the time spent supervising individuals who took
Reminyl did not increase significantly. In addition, the
time that caregivers spent assisting patients on placebo
with daily-living activities increased steadily
throughout the trial, totalling an average of 23 extra
minutes per day by the end of six months. On the other
hand, caregivers of patients taking Reminyl reported a
decrease in the amount of time spent assisting their
charges by an average of 38 minutes per day.
A different study focused on caregiver distress and
analysed data from a five-month study of 286 U.S.
patients. Participating caregivers rated the degree of
distress they experienced in response to 10 types of
patient symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions and
agitation. The analysis found that after five months,
distress significantly increased among those caring for
patients who took placebo. In contrast, distress scores
were not significantly different at the end of the study
than at the beginning for those caring for persons who
received Reminyl.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-09/k-sod091301.htm
The benefits of ARICEPT®
(donepezil hydrochloride) may extend into more
advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease than
previously investigated, according to a first-ever
published study of ARICEPT® in patients with
moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease, which found
significant benefits in patient function, cognition,
behavior, and activities of daily living, with very
good tolerability. ARICEPT® is approved for the
treatment of symptoms of mild to moderate
Alzheimer’s disease. Further study of ARICEPT® in
patients with severe Alzheimer's disease is
currently under way.
The study was published in the 28 August issue of
Neurology.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/pn-fps082701.htm
August 2001
In a 54-week U.S. study of
415 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's,
patients who took the drug donepezil maintained
their level of functioning in everyday activities
such as shopping and fixing meals, 72 percent longer
than those who received a placebo did. The study
measured the amount of time before patients'
functioning declined based on a clinical rating
scale. Those taking donepezil declined, on average,
five months later than the people taking the
placebo.
Another study found that patients with mild to
moderate Alzheimer's disease taking placebo declined
by about twice as much as those taking donepezil,
based on a scale of cognitive ability, functioning
in daily activities and other factors. The one-year
study involved 286 people in Scandinavia and the
Netherlands.
The studies were published in the August 14 issue of
Neurology.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/aaon-apt080601.htm
A new study suggests that an
estrogen
skin patch given to women with mild to moderate
Alzheimer's disease can improve their memory and
attention skills. The study involved only 20 women
for eight weeks, and the results will need to be
confirmed by a larger-scale study. Research to date
has been equivocal about the effects of estrogen on
women with Alzheimer's, with some finding a
memory-enhancing effect, and others finding no
effect. It is speculated that the type of estrogen
might be critical. The present study used estradiol,
a type of estrogen that has been shown to have an
effect on the brain.
The study was published in the August 28 issue of
Neurology, the journal of the American
Academy of Neurology.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/aaon-epm082001.htm
Using a new vaccine, NYU
School of Medicine researchers have prevented
the development of Alzheimer's disease in mice
genetically engineered with the human gene for
the disease. The researchers are optimistic that
this new vaccine is safer than one already being
tested in early human clinical trials. The new
vaccine, modeled on a fragment of a protein
called amyloid, which is most frequently
implicated in causing Alzheimer's, reduced the
amount of amyloid plaque in the brains of mice
by 89 percent. At the same time, the vaccine
reduced the amount of soluble amyloid beta in
the brain by 57 percent. Early clinical trials
of the new vaccine could begin within one year.
The study is published in the August 2 issue of
the American Journal of
Pathology.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/nyum-nrs080101.htm
Researchers
at the University of Illinois at Chicago have
designed and synthesized highly potent inhibitor
compounds that could lead to an effective
treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.In earlier
work, the researchers had designed an inhibitor
that blocks the action of one of two enzymes
thought to be responsible for Alzheimer’s
disease. This enzyme, called memapsin 2, is
responsible for producing beta-amyloid, which
forms the plaques so characteristic of
Alzheimer’s disease. The inhibitor was reported
in the Journal of the American Chemical Society
last year and was shown to be effective in test
tube experiments. However, while useful as a
model, the inhibitor was too big to be effective
in drug therapy. What is needed is a compound
small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier.
This latest paper reports on a new, smaller,
generation of inhibitors designed and tested in
the laboratory.
The work was reported in the American Chemical
Society’s Journal of
Medicinal Chemistry.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/uoia-dco080201.htm
July 2001
Amyloid b-protein precursor (APP)
is snipped apart by enzymes to produce three protein
fragments. Two fragments remain outside the cell and
one stays inside. When APP is produced in excessive
quantities, one of the cleaved segments that remains
outside the cell, called the amyloid b-peptides,
clumps together to form amyloid plaques that kill
brain cells and may lead to the development of
Alzheimer’s disease. New research indicates that the
short "tail" segment of APP that is trapped inside
the cell might also contribute to Alzheimer’s
disease, through a process called transcriptional
activation - switching on genes within the cell.
Researchers speculate that creation of amyloid
plaque is a byproduct of a misregulation in normal
APP processing.
The findings were published in the July 6, 2001,
issue of the journal Science.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-07/aaft-eta070201.htm
New research in
mice may explain why certain antibodies
could slow or reverse changes in the brain
that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s
disease. The study used an antibody that
targets a particular region on the
amyloid-beta protein. Animals injected with
the antibody over a period of months
developed fewer amyloid plaques in the brain
than did control animals. It appears that
the antibody draws amyloid-beta out of the
brain and into the blood as a clearance
mechanism. "Our work is distinguished from
previous research in that we have discovered
that this particular antibody can be
administered into the bloodstream and need
not necessarily gain access to the brain and
directly attack amyloid plaque to be
effective in reducing plaques. Thus, our
work suggests a new mechanism by which
certain anti-amyloid antibodies could be
useful in preventing or treating
Alzheimer’s." The research team now is
working to understand the detailed mechanism
of how the antibody exerts its effect. The
research has potential implications for both
diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s
disease.
The study is published in the July 3 issue
of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences Early Edition.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-07/aaft-sgc070201.htm
It is not always easy for doctors
to know whether a patient is suffering from Alzheimer's
disease or some other form of dementia. A new study suggests
tracking a patient's circadian rhythm (the daily cycle of
body temperature change and activity) may lead not only to
better diagnosis but also to better therapy for the
devastating sleep disturbances that often accompany
dementia. The study looked at the circadian rhythms of 38
dementia patients over six years. Some had Alzheimer's;
others had what is known as fronto-temporal degeneration.
Patients with Alzheimer's reached their temperature peak
much later in the day than healthy people. People with
fronto-temporal dementia had a normal temperature rhythm,
but their activity levels peaked much earlier compared with
levels of healthy people. And while people with
fronto-temporal degeneration did have restful periods, these
were much rarer with Alzheimer's. Their work, the
researchers said, may help doctors who have tried to treat
insomnia in dementia patients with melatonin and light
therapy, in an effort to "reset" their biological clocks.
The study appeared in The Archives of
General Psychiatry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/health/17VITA-5.html
A large-scale Finnish study
following 1449 men and women over 21 years found
that raised systolic blood pressure and high serum
cholesterol concentration, particularly in
combination, in midlife, increase the risk of
Alzheimer's disease in later life. Raised diastolic
blood pressure had no significant effect.
The study was reported in the
British Medical Journal.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7300/1447
