August 10, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

An August 7, 2015 Lundbeck press release announced that the pharmaceutical company “joined the Global Alzheimer’s Platform (GAP) to help accelerate the development of new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.” According to George Vradenburg, USA2 chairman and CEO of GAP Inc., “Lundbeck's engagement in the leadership of the GAP Initiative greatly strengthens our efforts to bring private, public and academic leaders together to accelerate the development and delivery of innovative Alzheimer's treatments to those with or at risk for this disease. We welcome Lundbeck as an active member of GAP because they bring not only broad industry experience but also specialized expertise in brain disease and a rich pipeline of Alzheimer's disease compounds."


MUST READS

An August 9, 2015 Voice of America article reported that “Researchers say they have developed a treatment that may cause the protein to return to its original form, preventing the disease from developing or reversing the effects of the damage in people who already suffer from Alzheimer’s.” 

An August 7, 2015 U.S. News and World Report article profiled the impact of caregiving for parents with Alzheimer’s. According to the article, “On a good day, Elizabeth Brood wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and goes to the gym before her boyfriend heads to work around 6:15 a.m. She makes coffee, readies her parents' morning medications – making sure to hide her mother's in chunks of bananas and in the cereal bowl – and changes her mother into fresh clothes. She takes her father to a day program, and sometimes a nurse comes to the house to help her care for her mother, giving her a chance to go grocery shopping or run other errands. Brood is 35, and the primary caregiver for both of her parents with Alzheimer's disease…Brood is among the millions who assist someone with Alzheimer's with these tasks each day. The association's report indicates that in 2014, friends and family members of those with the disease provided an estimated 17.9 billion hours of unpaid care; two-thirds of caregivers are estimated to be women, and 34 percent are over 65. The report also shows that 250,000 children and young adults between ages 8 and 18 provide help to someone with Alzheimer's disease or dementia.”

An August 7, 2015 Discover Magazine Neuroskeptic article raised questions about a recent report linking environmental factors like pollution to dementia and Alzheimer’s. According to the post, “Having concluded that the rise in neurological deaths from 1990 to 2010 is probably real, Pritchard and Rosenorn-Lanng go on to speculate as to the possible causes. Except they claim not be speculating: We avoid the temptation to speculate but point toward a number of studies indicating possible epigenetic factors influencing neurological morbidity,suggesting that possible nongenetic influences on gene expression, may be entertained. This is right out of Susan Greenfield‘s playbook: she, too, once claimed that she was not speculating but merely pointing: “I point to the increase in autism and I point to internet use. That’s all“…Those headlines about how this study found dementia striking earlier? Outright wrong. Pritchard and Rosenorn-Lanng found that rates of neurological deaths in people aged 55-74 years were effectively unchanged, with an increase of just 2% in men and 1% in women.”