If you want to congratulate Dr. Peter Whitehouse and Danny George for writing their book The Myth of Alzheimer’s, let them know how wrong you think they are, or are just plain curious, here’s your chance. They’ll be featured on a HealthTalk webcast tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 14th) at 7 PM eastern. Details are on the registration page at the HealthTalk site.
My friend Chuck Jackson, who along with many family members has early onset Alzheimer’s disease, will testify at a U.S. Senate hearing on Alzheimer’s tomorrow (Wednesday May 14th). The hearing starts at 10:30 AM eastern time. A link to the live webcast will be available at http://aging.senate.gov/.
Orien Reid Nix is a baby boomer with a family history of dementia. She is also Chair of Alzheimer’s Disease International.
Last week, she gave a keynote address at the Wisconsin State Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders in Milwaukee. In her talk, she focused on the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s on baby boomers, both as they care for their elders and as they develop their own memory problems.
Orien Reid Nix and Corinne Reid Owens
Ms. Reid Nix was accompanied by her aunt, Corinne Reid Owens, a civil rights activist in Wisconsin. Ms. Owens is 95, and does not have Alzheimer’s. But several of Ms. Reid Nix’s family members, including her mother, had the disease. In her speech, she talked about the challenges of caring for her mother while still caring for her children – a common situation these days. Estimates of the number of Americans in the “sandwich generation” run as high as 20 million. There’s even a new term, “club sandwich generation,” to describe people who are caring for three generations.
New imaging techniques have shown that many cognitively normal elders have as much amyloid protein (thought by some to cause Alzheimer’s) in their brains as do people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Does this mean that these cognitively normal elders are on the brink of developing Alzheimer’s, or does it mean that the amount of amyloid in the brain doesn’t always correlate to the amount of memory loss?
The Alzheimer Research Forum has now posted three parts of a four-part report from the Human Amyloid Imaging Conference. Their report covers the mixed results from studies using evidence Pittsburgh Compound-B (PIB) imaging of amyloid, and the potential effect on early diagnosis and clinical trials.
Summary: A new study provides more evidence that depression may be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s.
People with dementia often report they suffered from depression before they developed serious problems with memory and thinking. Study after study has shown a link between depression and memory loss. Researchers continue to debate whether depression increases the risk of developing serious memory loss or is simply a sign of brain changes underlying Alzheimer’s or other dementias.
Robert S. Wilson, Ph. D.
Dr. Robert Wilson, Professor of Neurological Sciences and Psychology at Rush University Medical Center, studies the neurobiology of the connection between depression and dementia. In an article in a recent issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, he and his colleagues provide more evidence that depression may be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s.
Continue reading "Does Depression Increase Your Risk of Memory Loss?" »
David Brooks’ April 11th New York Times opinion piece, “The Great Forgetting,” could have been a thoughtful look at the social consequences of memory loss and aging. Instead, his keen observations on "the memory haves and the memory have-nots" were followed by silly jokes.
He missed the opportunity for a more serious discussion about how our hyper-cognitive society measures a person's value by the speed and accuracy of his recall.
When my father was struggling with memory loss, his doctors prescribed both Aricept and Namenda. If they helped his memory and thinking, I couldn’t tell. For Dad, the side effects of these medicines didn’t seem to be worth any benefit.
Dad and my nephew Chris play the piano
But for other people with memory loss, these drugs seem to be very helpful, and the side effects are generally tolerable. This wide variety in benefits and side effects may be what the American Academy of Family Practitioners (AAFP) and the American College of Physicians (ACP) were trying to address when they published new guidelines about drug treatment of dementia last month.
Summary: CADASIL is a type of stroke disorder that can cause young onset dementia. Two web sites have been developed by women whose families are affected by the disease.
Billie Duncan-Smith’s husband Steve’s first symptom came when he was 38. He woke up with an excruciating headache, and started vomiting because the pain was so bad. Over the next few years, he would suffer many such migraines, some lasting for several weeks. An MRI of his brain showed a high number of white matter lesions, but Steve’s doctors weren’t sure what was causing his headaches.
Billie and Steve in 2004
While Steve suffered, Billie searched the internet and contacted medical experts all over the world. She sent his records and test results to those who offered to help. Finally, someone at the U.S. National Institutes of Health called her to suggest Steve might have CADASIL (Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Sub-cortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy), a type of stroke disorder.
Continue reading "CADASIL: Young Onset Dementia Caused by a Stroke Disorder" »
My friend Don Moyer, who blogs about his wife Jenny's memory loss and about memory loss in general, will be one of the guests on a HealthTalk webcast Wednesday (April 9, 2008) at 4 pm Pacific time. He, Jenny and Dr. Renee Beard, a geriatric sociologist at the University of Illinois Chicago, have published a paper about the rich and meaningful lives people with memory loss lead.
You can read more about this webcast, and register to participate here.
Summary: Dr. Marwan Sabbagh’s new book The Alzheimer's Answer: Reduce Your Risk and Keep Your Brain Healthy
Dr. Marwan Sabbagh is a geriatric neurologist and Alzheimer’s researcher at Sun Health Research Institute in Arizona. He spends his days seeing memory loss patients and their families, and supervising Alzheimer’s clinical trials. He helped care for his mother-in-law when she suffered from dementia. Like all of us who have watched family members struggle with memory loss, he worries about how it will affect his generation and his children’s.
Marwan Sabbagh, MD
For a man who admits to a fear of aging, he has deep personal relationships with the elders in his community. He calls Alzheimer’s “the embodiment of all that is sad and destructive about growing old,” and spends a lot of time thinking about what contributes to successful aging.
Looking at both the personal and the societal costs of Alzheimer’s, Dr. Sabbagh has come to the conclusion that our approach to memory loss must emphasize prevention. This is message of his new book The Alzheimer's Answer: Reduce Your Risk and Keep Your Brain Healthy
Summary: Amyloid inhibitors, a type of Alzheimer’s drug under development, may not be as promising as once thought. A cheap and easy test early in the drug development process should help researchers focus on the most promising compounds. This finding does not apply to the vaccines being developed to clear amyloid.
If you’re one of the millions waiting for Alzheimer’s drugs now under development, you’ll want to know that researchers at the University of California, San Franciso (UCSF) have come to some interesting conclusions about one type of potential treatment. Which do you want first - the good news or the bad?
UCSF researchers Brian Shoichet, Ph. D. (left) and Robert Fletterick, Ph.D
Let’s start with the bad news. It looks like “amyloid inhibitors” may not be as promising as once thought. Some Alzheimer’s researchers are focused on developing these compounds to prevent beta amyloid proteins from clumping together to form the fibrils and plaques thought to be harmful to your brain. But as with other diseases, the trick is to find compounds that will affect only the beta amyloid “target,” without affecting other proteins your body and brain might need.
Research conducted in the lab of Brian Shoichet, a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF, suggests that amyloid inhibitors often affect too many other proteins to be safe and effective Alzheimer’s treatments. The results of his work on this topic were published in late January in Nature Chemical Biology online.
Continue reading "Amyloid Inhibitors for Alzheimer's: Less Promising Than Thought?" »
Summary: A new conference report from the U.S. National Institute on Aging summarizes the presentations, discussions and recommendations of top Alzheimer’s researchers. From my layperson’s point of view, the report shows three reasons why Alzheimer’s research is at a crossroads:
1. We don’t really understand what causes memory loss and dementia.
2. Every brain is different, and multiple factors and diseases may underlie any one person’s memory problems.
3. Overall, research to date has not yielded the hoped-for answers.
Of the many recommendations made to the NIA, the ones involving broadening the concept of Alzheimer’s and collaborating with scientists in other fields make the most sense to me. The NIA meeting and report seem like good first steps towards consensus on which road to take.
Over the weekend, I’ve been reading through an excellent report on a conference on Alzheimer’s convened by the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA). The conference took place in October 2006, on the 100th anniversary of Dr. Alzheimer’s discovery of plaques and tangles in the brain of his patient Auguste D.
Continue reading "Alzheimer's Research at a Crossroads: a new conference report" »
Two of my friends are featured in recent articles about Alzheimer's. An article in the Appleton, Wisconsin Post-Crescent tells the story of the dementia that runs in Chris VanRyzin's family, and how a combination of prescription medicines, supplements and lifestyle changes have gradually improved her health. Chris is the founder of forMemory, a non-profit working to share information to prevent and treat early onset Alzheimer's and related disease.
Jim Cook's work to help identify people under age 65 with memory loss in the Lincoln, Nebraska area is profiled in the Kearney, Nebraska Hub article. Jim was diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's when he was 55.
We seem to be rethinking everything right now - the energy we use, the pollution we create, the foods we eat. Peter Whitehouse, a prominent Alzheimer’s researcher and doctor, is also rethinking the disease we call late onset Alzheimer’s.
In his new book, The Myth of Alzheimer's: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis
Are people with memory loss more creative? It seems many have taken up painting, writing or playing an instrument. Donna Beveridge has taken up all three.
Donna, 65, is a retired elementary school teacher diagnosed last year with early stage probable Alzheimer’s. She lives with her partner Betsey and their two cats, Shadow and Idgy, near the coast of Maine. Her three children and their families live close by.
