August 07, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

MUST READS

An August 7, 2015 The Guardian article reported on the link between modern life and dementia. According to the article, “The results were controversial. As one newspaper headline reported: “Modern living leads to brain disease”, which in a somewhat simplistic way reflected what our research uncovered about the impact of the changing environment in which we live on our neurological health…Deaths of men over 75 have nearly trebled in 20 years and deaths of women have increased more than five-fold. For the first time since records began, more US women over 75 are dying of brain disease than cancer…In the other 20 western countries, most have doubled their neurological deaths and seven countries trebled their neurological toll. It might be argued that, as people live longer, they develop diseases that they previously did not live long enough to develop. While there is some truth in this, the speed and size of the increases in just 20 years points to mainly environmental influences.”

An August 6, 2015 Reston Now opinion piece by Virginia House Delegate Ken Plum urged Congress to increase research funding for Alzheimer’s. According to Plum, “Congress has been slow to appropriate increased monies for expanded medical research. Although there continues to be some hopeful work going on, research and educational programming is highly dependent on individuals contributing through such organizations as the Alzheimer’s Association. With the projected increase in the number of people affected by Alzheimer’s and the promising effects of genome research, funding should be a priority.”


RESEARCH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

An August 6, 2015 Reuters article reported that “Stanford University researchers are using the most sophisticated fly catcher in the world with the potential to speed up the rate of scientific insight into diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s.”

An August 6, 2015 Gizmodo article reported that “two groups of scientists in China have successfully turned human skin cells into neurons.” According to the article, “They hope that their technique could one day help rejuvenate failing tissues in the brains of Alzheimers patients. The two teams in China focused on strategies for converting skin cells to neurons, with one group focusing on skin cells from mice and the other on humans. Results of their work are published in two papers today from the journal Cell Stem Cell. The team working on human cells drew their samples from Alzheimers patients, because one possible end goal of this research would be to produce working brain cells that could supplement failing tissues in the brains of people with dementia.”