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Researchers report they have valuable new tools to diagnose and predict Alzheimer’s disease and have added to the growing body of evidence that some vitamins and exercise might help lower a person’s risk. But the new science presented at the international Alzheimer’s Association conference this week in Honolulu did not provide what patients and families want most—a treatment for the 5.3 million Americans with this devastating disease.
Still, scientists say that as they continue to unravel the complicated chemistry of the Alzheimer’s brain, they move closer each day to a therapy that works.
“We desperately need to know more about the causes of Alzheimer’s, and the factors that affect our risk of getting or not getting the disease,” said William Thies, chief medical officer of the Alzheimer’s Association. “This kind of research will provide more targets for therapies and prevention strategies.”
The following is a roundup of some of the most important research to come out of the conference and medical journals this week and includes links to more detailed reporting from the AARP Bulletin.
TreatmentInsulin nose spray: A small drug trial testing insulin in the form of a nose spray to improve brain function showed some promising results. For years, Alzheimer’s has been linked to diabetes, because in both cases the body has trouble processing insulin. Researchers, including Suzanne Craft of the University of Washington in Seattle, believe that restoring normal insulin function in the brain could prove to be a treatment for Alzheimer’s. The researchers gave the insulin spray or a placebo to about 100 people with the disease and found that people who used the spray scored better on memory tests than those who did not use the insulin. Patients with a higher dose of insulin showed improvement in daily living activities but no improvement in cognition. The researchers say the results are encouraging enough to warrant a large trial.
PreventionVitamin D: Adequate levels of the “sunshine vitamin” can help protect against impaired thinking and dementia later in life. A new British study found that low levels of vitamin D in older adults can cause problems with memory, attention and logic. The study, which examined more than 3,000 adults age 65 and older, found that those who were severely vitamin D deficient were nearly four times more likely to perform poorly on tests of memory and attention.
Moderate to heavy exercise: Physical activity was found to lower the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s, especially in men. Looking at data from a long-running study tracking the heart health of several thousand people, researchers at Harvard University found that older men who regularly participated in moderate to heavy physical activity had a 40 percent lower risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s, while those with the least amount of physical activity were 45 percent more likely to experience severe cognitive decline. Researchers say that maintaining even moderate levels of physical activity is a good way to lower the risk for dementia even into your 80s.
Tea: Drinking tea could cut the risk of dementia by about a third, according to a large-scale study that followed 4,800 men and women age 65 and older for 14 years. Compared to non-tea drinkers, those who regularly drank tea had significantly less cognitive decline. It’s unlikely that the caffeine in tea is related to the benefit, researchers note, because coffee—which has twice as much caffeine as tea—did not produce a similar benefit except at much higher levels of consumption.
Vitamin E: Eating more almonds and spinach—and other foods rich in vitamin E—does a better job of protecting against Alzheimer’s disease than popping a vitamin E supplement. Researchers in the Netherlands followed 5,400 men and women, age 55 and older, and found that those who had diets high in vitamin E were about 25 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than those who ate the least amount. Vitamin E is found in nuts, seeds, cooking oil, wheat germ and dark leafy green vegetables. In this study, published this week in the Archives of Neurology, the major sources for the nutrient were margarine, sunflower oil, butter, soybean oil and mayonnaise.
DetectionNew Scan: A new radioactive dye, used in conjunction with a PET scan, gives doctors and scientists a clear picture of amyloid plaque, a protein that’s a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, in the brains of patients. The new “tracer” agent lasts longer than the current one and if approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it can be used in clinics across the country to track the effects of experimental drugs and to help diagnose the disease.
Help for patients and families
Web Tool: The Alzheimer’s Association just launched a new personalized interactive tool to help Alzheimer’s patients find clinical trials for which they might be eligible. TrialMatch lets each person search more than 100 research trials and narrows the results to those where there is a reasonable chance that person might be accepted for enrollment.
Latest information: The association also has unveiled a new website, the Research Center, with the latest information on Alzheimer’s disease research and science.
Science of the diseaseCauses of Alzheimer’s: Scientists are striving to understand the science of Alzheimer’s disease, including brain plaques, the clumps and strands of protein that form when brain cells die. Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York have used newly discovered tracers to investigate genetic variations in the development of these substances. These gene variations may mean that some drugs will work better on Alzheimer’s patients with a certain genetic makeup, said Sam Gandy, associate director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Mount Sinai.
DiagnosisProposed changes: For the first time in 25 years, medical experts have proposed major changes to update the ways to diagnose the disease. They want to use new tools and brain scans to detect the disease in its earliest stages, even before any symptoms appear. Some doctors question whether early diagnosis benefits patients when there are no drugs to slow the progression of the disease. Others say tracking the disease from its earliest stages will shed new light on this devastating dementia and enhance researchers’ chances of finding a cure.
Elizabeth Agnvall is a contributing editor of the AARP Bulletin.
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