April 11, 2016

Today's Top News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT  

An April 11, 2016 Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation event item announced that the 2016 Great Ladies Luncheon will honor UsAagainstAlzheimer's co-founders “Trish and George Vradenburg for their contributions to the fight against Alzheimer's disease.” 

Alzheimer’s Talks Today! On Monday, April 11, from 4 to 5 p.m. ET, we will discuss the exciting new analysis published by ResearchersAgainstAlzheimer’s, an UsAgainstAlzheimer’s network, showing the growing optimism that 17 promising Alzheimer’s medicines could emerge in the next five years. Sign up here
 

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An April 10, 2016 California Health Report article reported on California’s efforts to become more dementia friendly and highlighted the national Dementia Friendly America movement. According to the article, “Olivia Mastry, who leads the Dementia Friendly America (DFA) movement, admits being shocked at the momentum DFA has enjoyed. ‘We’re starting to see real movement and commitment across the country,’ she says. Mastry compares the dementia friendly movement to efforts by the disability community to improve access. ‘We all benefit from the curb cut and automatic door,” says Mastry. “And we’ll all benefit from dementia-friendly (communities).’ In San Francisco, the city’s 2020 Foresight: San Francisco’s Strategy for Excellence in Dementia Care includes a lengthy list of recommendations, some of which are being tested today.”

An April 9, 2016 San Francisco Gate article reported that “Scientists have developed an imaging process that for the first time, they say, can identify and track the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in people’s brains, even when there are no symptoms — a development that could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment for a disease that has become more pervasive among the growing number of older Americans.” According to the article, “To date, doctors have largely depended on a range of diagnostic tools — from rigorous patient and family interviews to cognitive testing and blood samples — to determine whether someone who is starting to show symptoms actually has Alzheimer’s. Now, a team of Bay Area scientists has created a scanning process to visualize levels and locations of two main Alzheimer’s-causing proteins in adult human brains, giving them a window into the current state and future progression of the disease.”

An April 8, 2016 Scientific American article reported that researchers believe “hacking an enzyme’s structure could lead to drugs for Alzheimer’s and Schizophrenia.” According to the article, “A team of researchers at the Technical University of Denmark (D.T.U.) and University of Oxford have for the first time identified the molecular structure of dopamine beta-hydroxylase (DBH), the enzyme that controls the conversion between dopamine and norepinephrine, two major neurotransmitters. Understanding the crystal structure of the enzyme could provide an ideal target for drug development…Imbalances in the levels of these neurotransmitters—and the role DBH plays in regulating them—have been implicated in a wide range of disorders, including hypertension, congestive heart failure, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s and even cocaine addiction.”


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