Alzheimer Related News Items

News as of 2/06/00
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Top Items
Altered Protein May Contribute to AD - The discovery that a different protein controls a key brain enzyme in patients with AD may lead to new ways to diagnose and treat this form of dementia, Harvard researchers report. The team found that compared with normal brains, a different protein which regulates the activity of cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5) in the brains of patients with AD, causing Cdk5 to become overactive. This leads to modification of a protein called tau, which accumulates in the neurofibrillary tangles characteristic of AD. The Cdk5 protein is responsible for adding phosphates to other proteins, which alters their activity. It is normally inactive, and must associate with a partner protein called p35 to be active. The p35-Cdk5 complex is important for normal development and function of the brain, the researcher explained to Reuters Health. In most of the AD patients, they found a smaller protein that was related to p35, which they called p25. The amount of p25 was 20 to 40 times higher than the amount of p35, and the activity of Cdk5 was also increased. Neurons and many neurofibrillary tangles in AD patients were positive for p25, but not p35. The researchers suggest that p25 production and accumulation in the brain may contribute to the development of AD. "Apparently, under certain conditions, Cdk5 becomes, so to speak, 'out of control' because of the production of the p25 protein,'' the researcher said. "Whenever the p25 protein is produced, it's a bad sign." Reuters Health 12/8/99 Nature 1999;402: 588-589, 615-622.

Drugs
UM Researchers Discover 'Key' to Blood-brain Barrier - Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore have identified a receptor in the human brain that regulates the interface between the bloodstream and the brain, which is known as the blood-brain barrier. This breakthrough could lead to a better understanding of this nearly impenetrable barrier and to treatment of diseases that affect the brain, such as Multiple Sclerosis, brain tumors, meningitis, AD, and HIV infection. The blood-brain barrier is a collection of cells that press together to block many substances from entering the brain, while allowing others to pass. Earlier research conducted at the University of Maryland School of Medicine found that two proteins, iknown as zonulin and zot, unlock the cell barrier in the intestine. The new research indicates that zonulin and zot also react with similar receptors in the brain. "The blood-brain barrier is like a gateway to the brain. It is almost always locked, keeping out many diseases. Unfortunately, it also keeps out medications as well. Almost nothing can pass," explains lead author Alessio Fasano, M.D., professor at the school. "The identification of these proteins in the human brain holds the promise of allowing us to deliver new types of medications across the blood-brain barrier. It would be a boon to humanity if the blood-brain barrier could be opened briefly, and safely, to allow passage of a new generation of drugs into the brain," the researchers said. PR 1/03/00 Journal of Neurochemistry January 2000

Korean Team Claims Progress Against AD - South Korean researchers at Seoul National University said on 1/04/00 they had discovered a substance that protects and regenerates brain cells in rats, raising hopes that the chemical could help cure AD and strokes. They found a substance called dehydroevodiamine, extracted from natural herbs that has the prospects of curing AD and vascular type dementia. The substance was found to be efficient in decreasing memory loss and preventing strokes from destroying brain cells. They believe it will take about two to three years for the substance to be produced as a new medicine. Reuters 1/04/00 Journal of Neurochemistry 1/00

Cogent Pharmaceuticals Completes Third Phase I Trial; Evaluating Safety of Once-Daily Transdermal AD Patch - Cogent Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced 2/3/00 that it has successfully completed a two-week Phase I trial evaluating the safety and skin sensitivity of a once-a-day proprietary transdermal patch delivering arecoline, a muscarinic receptor agonist, for patients suffering from AD. The trial included 22 AD patients. The Cogent patch was able to deliver arecoline at levels equal to intravenous doses that in prior published studies demonstrated improvement in cognitive ability. Muscarinic receptor agonists are under development as therapeutic alternatives to acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, such as Aricept. "Unlike acetyl-cholesterase inhibitors, which are limited to reducing metabolism of acetycoline in the brain and are therefore useful only in early and middle stages of AD, arecoline's mechanism of action gives it potential utility at all stages of the disease," said Hal Broderson, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Cogent. PR 3/3/00

Testosterone May Reduce Production of AD Protein - In the presence of testosterone, nerve cells collected from rats and mice tended to produce a harmless or beneficial form of beta-amyloid protein rather than the form that makes up plaques in the brains of AD patients. "The testosterone directs the metabolism so that much more goes to the good pathway and much less to the bad pathway," study co-author Dr. Paul Greengard of The Rockefeller University in New York said in an interview with Reuters Health. "In other words, you get much less beta-amyloid peptide and you get more of this secretory beta-amyloid precursor protein, which is considered by most people to be beneficial for the health of the nerve cells,'' he added. While the findings do not necessarily apply to the treatment of humans -- the brain being a much more complex system than a laboratory culture dish -- the new findings suggest that testosterone may be helpful in preventing AD, according to the report. "In older men and in older women, there's a decrease in the level of testosterone, so the thought is that one might do some trials of testosterone in aging men to see whether it would reduce the incidence of AD as estrogen appears to do in women," Greengard said. Reuters Health 1/31/00 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2000;97:1202-1205

Aquila Biopharmaceuticals Grants QS-21 License to Elan - Aquila Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. announced 1/18/00 that it has granted an exclusive, worldwide license to Neuralab Ltd., which will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elan Corporation, plc after 1/31/2000, to use Aquila's lead Stimulon® adjuvant QS-21 with an undisclosed antigen in the field of AD. "We are delighted to be working with Elan in such an important disease area and to continue to build on the success of QS-21," said Alison Taunton-Rigby, President and CEO of Aquila. "Neurological diseases affect several million people in the United States." QS-21, Aquila's lead Stimulon® adjuvant, enhances the body's immune response. The product has been evaluated in a large number of Phase I, Phase II and Phase III clinical trials (about 30 different human clinical trials have been completed involving over 2000 subjects to date). Aquila Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. is a life sciences company developing and commercializing a range of proprietary products which enhance the immune response in animals and humans. PR 1/18/00

AXONYX Initiates Second Series in Phase I Human Clinical Trial for AD Drug - AXONYX Inc. announced 2/2/00 that the Company is continuing its Phase I human clinical trial for Phenserine, its lead AD drug by administering the drug to its second group of healthy, elderly volunteers. The first group of volunteers received Phenserine, 12/21/99. Phenserine is a potent, brain targeted, reversible and highly selective inhibitor of the enzyme, acetylcholin-esterase. In preclinical studies, inhibition of this enzyme has been shown to improve memory and cognitive performance. Phase I clinical studies are performed to find the appropriate dose for administering the drug to humans. The initial study is expected to be completed before the end of the second quarter of 2000. PR 2/2/00

Bradley: Better for What Ails Us - In George F. Will's column in th Washington Post 1/16/00 he noted Gore had criticized Sen. Bradley as "aiding the pharmaceutical industry, for example by favoring extensions for some pharmaceutical companies' patents." Will contends as drugs developed by the intensely competitive pharmaceutical industry become more capable, prices may decline, as has been the case in the computer industry. Even so, aggregate drug expenditures may rise. Indeed, we should hope they do. This is so because biology and genetics--especially the fast-unfolding Human Genome Project--are going to revolutionize drug development. Understanding the biological and genetic mechanisms of, say, AD (which costs upward of $90 billion a year for doctors, drugs and care) or breast cancer will lead to drug treatments that may be expensive, but also cheaper than today's limited responses to those afflictions.

Genes & Genetic Issues
Untangling a Link Between Normal Protein Folding and AD - An enzyme that snips apart proteins that form brain-clogging plaques in people with AD also appears to regulate enzymes that fold new proteins into their working forms in healthy cells. The discovery offers new hints about how mutations or exposure to chemicals that affect the regulation of protein-folding machinery might stimulate a protein-snipping enzyme, called presenilin-1, which has been implicated in the pathogenesis of AD. Such a link, if further confirmed, could have important implications for understanding and treating AD, say the researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of Michigan. The researchers began their studies in hopes of learning more about how proteins involved in the "unfolded protein response" (UPR) detect the amount of unfolded proteins in a cell and signal genes to either increase or decrease the production of protein-folding enzymes. The researchers knew that the UPR hinges on a protein, called Ire1, that senses the amount of unfolded proteins and switches on protein-folding genes. They have found a link between presenilin-1 and Ire1 processing, although it is not necessarily a direct one. Presenilin-1's apparent role in protein folding links this normal cellular process to AD because researchers had previously shown that presenilin-1 is part of the machinery that slices apart "amyloid precursor protein" to produce the amyloid plaques that clog the brains of AD patients. Presenilin-1's dual role could aid in both understanding and treating AD, said Peter Walter at UCSF. For example, he said, abnormally activated Ire1 -- perhaps through genetic mutation -- could overstimulate presenilin-1, which could act to create amyloid plaque deposition. "Also, environmental agents or toxins could cause protein misfolding through the UPR might induce presenilin-1 activity, which in turn might activate a proteolytic cascade that could also lead to increased amyloid deposits," said Walter. "Finally, this indication that presenilin-1 plays a role in normal protein processing makes it unlikely that AD could be treated using drugs to block this pathway without severe side effects for normal physiology," said Walter. PR 12/22/99 Cell 99, 691 (1999)

CytoTherapeutics Subsidiary Stemcells, Inc. Announces First Direct Isolation of Human Brain Stem Cells - StemCells, Inc. announced 1/20/00 results which suggest they have succeeded, for the first time, in purifying human brain stem cells directly from brain tissue and have dramatically expanded the number of these cells in simple defined cultures. StemCells, Inc. is focused on identifying tissue-specific stem cells such as the brain- derived neural stem cell. Stem cells are rare, undifferentiated cells that can both duplicate themselves ("self-renew") and produce differentiated (functionally specialized) cell types that constitute the various tissues or organ systems of the human body. "The ability to isolate and culture normal human brain stem cells is a breakthrough that could open the way to utilizing these cells to replace or repair diseased or damaged tissue in a patient with neurological or neurodegenerative disorders,'' said Dr. Uchida the leader of the neural stem cell research team at StemCells. "Highly purified normal stem cells, which have not been genetically modified with cancer genes to make them grow, may be very suitable for transplantation and may provide a safer and more effective alternative to therapies that are based on cells derived from cancer cells or from an unpurified mix of many different cell types." Potential applications of isolating human brain stem cells include neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and AD stroke and epilepsy, affect more than 5 million people in the United States alone, and currently no effective long-term therapies are available. The transplantation of human neural stem cells could potentially provide a way to repair tissue damaged by such diseases and injuries that affect the central nervous system. PR 1/20/00

The Recycled Generation - Stem-cell research holds the promise of an endless supply of new body parts, but it's bogged down in abortion politics and corporate rivalries, and shadowed by the possibility that the result might not be so great after all. The first step in creating those spare parts (which could be used not only for the aged but also for anyone in need of intervention) might well be the donation by the patient of a biopsy sample, which could be quickly cloned, thus creating an early embryo, which would produce stem cells in a week or so. Every cell and every tissue derived from those stem cells would be a perfect immunological match, which would immediately circumvent the big stumbling block of current transplant medicine: matching tissue. At that point, it simply becomes a matter of matching the ailment to the right cell type. Researchers speak of creating nerve cells to treat spinal-cord injuries, stroke and AD; glial cells for multiple sclerosis; pancreatic islet cells to treat diabetes; muscle cells for muscular dystrophy; chondrocytes for arthritis; hepatocytes for cholesterol metabolism; endothelial vessels to grow new blood vessels to replace vessels clogged by fat and plaque -- there are more than 200 different cell types in the body, and stem cells can theoretically be nudged to form each one. If these cells are souped up, as has been proposed, with an enzyme that maintains its cellular youthfulness, we're talking not only about replacement parts, but also about parts that never grow old. By Stephen S. Hall New York Times 1/30/00  

Genes Linked to Repeat Bleeds into the Brain - Carrying certain variants of the apolipoprotein E gene increases the risk of repeat episodes of stroke due to bleeding into the brain, report Harvard researchers. The genes have been previously implicated in lipid disorders and AD. These genes carry information for a protein involved in fat metabolism. "While the gene type cannot help us predict what patients will have strokes, it does help us to identify patients who might bleed again and to study treatments that could prevent those recurrent strokes," Dr. Steven M. Greenberg from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts told Reuters Health. The gene for apolipoprotein E comes in three forms -- epsilon 2 (e2), epsilon 3 (e3, the most common form), and epsilon 4 (e4) -- and everyone has two of these genes in any combination, the authors explain. The risk of repeat stroke was highest among patients who had both e2 and e4 forms of the apolipoprotein E gene, the researchers report, and those patients had repeat strokes earlier than other patients. While Greenberg did not suggest testing every elderly person, he said "we might test other elderly patients for whom we're considering (blood-thin- ning drugs) like aspirin or warfarin. You might decide not to use such treatments in patients with e2 or e4 (gene forms)" because of their increased risk of bleeding into the brain. Reuters Health 1/27/00 The New England Journal of Medicine 2000;342:240-245.

Antiabortion Groups Target Neuroscience Study at Nebraska - Scientists who use cells derived from human fetal tissue for studies of AD and HIV have been under siege for the past few weeks from antiabortion groups contending that it is immoral for anyone to benefit from elective abortions. State officials, including Republican Governor Mike Johanns, joined in, trying to get the university to stop the research. This provoked a confrontation over academic freedom. By Eliot Marshall Science 287: 1/14/2000

Dolly the Sheep Scientists Win Cloning Patent - U.S. biotechnology company Geron Corp., which bought the research company formed by the Scottish institute that cloned Dolly the sheep, has won the first UK patents for cloning. Geron Bio-Med, the company set up to exploit the cloning technology, is a British subsidiary of Geron based inside the Roslin Institute in Scotland where Dolly was created. When Geron announced the deal with the Roslin Institute last May, it said it planned to focus on growing human tissues that would not have the same immune problems as donor transplants. It aims to develop genetically identical cells from a patient that could be used to grow new tissue which could ultimately be used to treat a range of degenerative diseases such as cancer, AD and osteoporosis. PR 1/20/00

Caregivers
Calls Growing for Stopping Tube Feeding in Dementia - Nursing homes and hospitals should end the widespread use of stomach tubes to feed people with advanced AD or other types of dementia, according to an article published 1/20/00 in The New England Journal of Medicine. The article is the second one in a major medical journal to take such a stand in recent months, and many experts on dementia agree with the viewpoint. A similar article was published in October, in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Neither presented new research, but the authors of both had reviewed the medical literature and concluded that there was no evidence that feeding tubes helped most patients, and that they could be harmful. Tube feeding can cause diarrhea, bloating, infection and other problems, and demented patients often pull the tubes out, which leads to the patients being put in restraints. A spokesman for the Alzheimer's Association, Dr. Stephen McConnell, who was not involved in either article, said: "This is a position we actually took years ago, that it is ethically permissible to withdraw or withhold hydration and nutrition from somebody in advanced stages. Now there's some scientific evidence that tube feeding doesn't do what everybody thinks, prolong life or make people more comfortable." By Denise Grady New York Times 1/20/00 NEJM 2000;342:206-210

Sorting out Sleep in Patients with AD - Associated behavioral and psychiatric problems exert a much greater toll than the cognitive impairment per se on caregivers of patients with AD. Sleep disturbances and changes in the sleep-wake cycle are common clinical features that develop after the onset of dementia and constitute what has generally been described as "the sundown syndrome." In many cases, these disturbances in sleep overwhelm caregivers and lead to placement of the patient in an institution. A recent article by Susan McCurry and colleagues (J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol 1999; 12: 53-59 ) described the frequency and characteristics of sleep disturbances and their impact on caregivers in a representative community-based sample of 205 patients with AD. McCurry's work attempts to characterize those patients who wake up others, to elucidate the mechanisms and possibly arrive at solutions to this difficulty. Cluster analysis was used to explore whether there were groups of features, from a set of seven (appearing sad or depressed, being inactive for long periods, expressing fearfulness, fidgeting/pacing, wandering, being disoriented, and hallucinating) that could identify patients who wake up their caregivers at night. Three groups were identified: patients who exhibited more fearfulness, fidgeting, and occasional sadness; patients who were generally inactive during the day and had few other behavioral disorders; and patients who were more severely demented and had multiple behavioral difficulties, such as frequent hallucinations. These clusterings need to be confirmed in other studies. Indeed, McCurry and colleagues emphasize the need to explore other characteristics of patients that are linked to the waking of the caregiver and to the development of treatments. For example, they hypothesized that a program of daily exercise and activity that was shown to be effective in alleviating "sundown syndrome" may be suitable for the cluster that was generally inactive during the day. Bright-light therapy is effective in treating day/night reversal in some patients. Caregiver support groups may also offer ways to improve basic sleep hygiene in patients with AD. Others have found that sleep complaints also are common in caregivers, and they have started a study with an exercise intervention for family members. The Lancet, 354: 2098 12/18-25/99

Demented Seniors at Risk from Household Poisons - A report by Drs. James A. Walker and Gary P. Zaloga of Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, points out that household chemicals are dangerous to elderly people with dementia, who may drink them by mistake. They describe a case of an 88-year-old woman with AD who drank 10 ounces of a pine oil-based cleaning solution and died of complications. Over 10,000 such cases, in which people drank pine oil-based cleaning products, are reported each year in the US, making these products second only to gasoline as the most common type of substance involved in accidental toxic poisoning, the authors note. Both the demented elderly and children have in common the ability to move about their environment while doing so with limited cognitive faculties, leaving both groups vulnerable to the dangers of toxic ingestion. The researchers advise medical practitioners to become familiar with the treatment of pine oil intoxication. Quick response to signs of ingestion -- which include the aroma of pine on the breath of the patient, blurred vision, headache, sore throat, vomiting, and abdominal pain and respiratory failure -- is important to prevent serious and potentially fatal complications. By Alan Mozes Reuters Health 1/27/00 Chest 1999;116:1822-1826.

Battling AD, Offering Hope - In an AD story on NBC News 1/10/00 which has a summary and video clip at http://www.msnbc.com/news/355831.asp they point out that Joanne Koenig-Coste, a health-care consultant, has revolutionized the treatment for many AD patients, by seeing in them what most of us miss. "We need to look at people and say, 'What's there,' And not concentrate on what's gone," she said. Her breakthrough insight was that surroundings directly affect how a patient feels and behaves. "If we turn down lights at certain times and turn them up at other times, and color code...we change the course of what everyday is like," claims Koenig-Coste. She says we must recognize that the AD victims' reality is not ours -- that, to reach them, we must, in her words, "go where they are." She says the best treatment is not drugs: "No, it's love. It's love." By Bob Faw NBC news correspondent

Finding Information on Issues of Aging - The Washington Post has an article on this topic where they excerpted from "Eldercare: The Best Resources to Help You Help Your Aging Relatives," edited by Marty Richards, MSW, ACSW that gave recommendations for books Among the web sites they cited with approval were
AARP Webplace - "The site covers many issues affecting the lives of older adults and updates its information often." http://www.aarp.org
ElderWeb: An Online Elder Care Sourcebook - "ElderWeb is designed to assist older Americans, professionals and family members. For a one-stop Web guide on elder care and related issues, bookmark this site. An impressive array of links to all the basics: health, living arrangements, finance, legal issues and more." http://www.elderweb.com. Washington Post 1/24/00

AD Dementia: Resources for Elderly in the Community - At the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists Annual Meeting 12/99 Geoff Henrietta, PharmD, FASCP present a paper in this topic. His summary -- implications for clinical practice is as follows. Symptoms of AD include short- and long-term memory impairment, memory loss that interferes with activities of daily living, no disturbance of consciousness, and at least 1 of the following: impaired abstract thinking, impaired judgment, or personality changes. Risk factors for AD may include a family history of AD, estrogen deficiency, head trauma, high levels of APOE 4, and, possibly, a low educational level. Possible causes of dementia are AD, Pick's disease, Lewy body disease, Huntington's disease, vascular dementia, multiple sclerosis, neoplasms, hydrocephalus, infection, and depression. Phase I of AD is identified by a suspicion of the disease. Phase II of AD is when the patient or caregiver seeks medical assistance in dealing with the disease. Phase III is characterized by progression of the disease that leaves the patient dependent on others for total care and may lead the patient to a skilled nursing facility for care. Phase IV is identified as the stage at which the patient requires post-placement in a skilled nursing facility. Medscape.com 12/99

White House Wants More Money for Nursing Home Inspections - To strengthen oversight of nursing homes, President Bill Clinton will ask Congress for an additional $15.9 million for training inspectors, conducting surprise inspections and cracking down on the 100 worst facilities. With nearly a fourth of the nation's nursing homes deficient in meeting national quality standards, according to government auditors, the administration has promised in the last year to do more monitoring and give inspectors more training. The money, part of Clinton's 2001 budget plan, would bring total funds for nursing care oversight to $70 million, an increase of nearly 30 percent over last year. Most of the money goes to state agencies responsible for inspecting some 16,700 nursing homes that provide care for about 1.6 million older Americans. AP 01/14/00

Testing
NeuroLogic Begins Clinical Trials of Laboratory Diagnostic ForAD Following FDA Agreement - NeuroLogic, Inc, announced 1/31/00 two significant milestones for its proprietary AD diagnostic test, which was acquired under an exclusive worldwide license from the National Institutes of Health in 1998. These milestones include FDA's agreement with the proposed clinical protocol to conduct clinical trials of this proprietary diagnostic test, and research agreements with Johns Hopkins University as the primary clinical site, the Copper Ridge Institute as the coordinating clinical site, and West Virginia University's Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center in Morgantown, WV. The diagnostic is the first cellular-based test designed to diagnose AD and could potentially be faster, easier to administer and less invasive than other diagnostic tests currently under development. The study, which will include 600 patients, will be multi-centered and double blind. Skin "punch" biopsies from patients will be obtained from the various clinical sites and submitted to NLI laboratory facilities in Rockville, Md., for analysis. PR 1/31/00

Prevention
Study: Hormone Therapy's Cancer Risk Understated - Women who take a commonly prescribed combination of the hormones estrogen and progesterone after menopause may increase their risk of breast cancer much more than previously suspected, according to a major study released 1/25/00. The new findings affect millions of American women, many of whom may now re-evaluate whether the benefits of taking the hormones outweigh the risks, experts said. Some experts urged women to consult their doctors in light of the new findings to determine whether long-term hormone treatment makes sense for them. By Susan Okie Washington Post Staff Writer 1/26/00 Journal of the American Medical Association 2000;283:485-491

Other Items
Big Family a Possible Risk for AD - Having lots of brothers and sisters may increase the risk of AD, according to new study of 393 people with AD and 377 people who did not have the disease. People with five or more siblings were 39% more likely to develop the disease, researchers report. Although the study did not examine the reasons for the higher risk, Dr. Victoria Moceri, of the University of Washington in Seattle suggests that it might have some- thing to do with how the brain matures. The brains of children in large families, which tend to be less financially well-off than smaller families, may not mature completely. "A poor quality childhood environment could prevent the brain from reaching a complete level of maturation"' she said in a statement. "The effects of impaired development could produce a brain that is normal, but functions less efficiently." She noted that these effects might become more apparent once the aging process begins. According to Moceri, the most important message from the study is that environment early in life may play at least a partial role in the risk of AD much later in life. By Merritt McKinney Reuters Health 1/24/00 Neurology January 2000 issue

Married People less Likely to Develop AD - People who never marry are more likely to develop AD or another form of dementia than people who do marry, a new study from Bordeaux University in France suggests. Marriage appears to offer some sort of protection even for individuals whose spouse has died. The findings confirm that never-married individuals have a twofold increase for the risk of dementia and almost a threefold increase for the risk of AD. In their study of more than 2,800 people, 190 developed some type of dementia -- most often AD -- over a 5-year period. Of those, 4.4% were married or cohabitating, 5.1% were separated or divorced, 9.4% were widows and widowers, and 12.9% had never married. It's possible that people who never marry may have risk factors for AD that were not examined in the study, such as malnutrition, according to the report. Additionally, the individuals who never married could have some personality trait or behavior that accounts for both their single status and their increased risk of dementia, the researchers speculate. "If such an association between never- married individuals and AD can be confirmed, '' the authors write, "it should be taken into consideration in the evaluation of risk of AD." Reuters Health 12/20/99 Neurology 1999;53:1953-1958.

Brookhaven Lab Collaboration Determines How Aging Affects Brain Chemistry - The researchers found that age-related loss of dopamine, the brain chemical associated with pleasure and reward, slows metabolism in regions of the brain that are related to cognition. This finding may be helpful in developing interventions for age-related cognitive decline," said Dr. Nora Volkow, Brookhaven's Associate Director for Life Sciences and the lead author of the study. The researchers found that age is associated with a significant decline in dopamine D2 receptors - molecules that transmit signals that are associated with pleasure and reward in the brain. Approximately six percent of these receptors are lost with each decade of age, from 20 to 80 years. In the current investigation, for the first time, researchers discovered that when dopamine D2 receptors decreased, so did regional glucose metabolism in areas of the brain that are related to cognition. Decreased glucose metabolism translates to decreased brain activity, or deterioration of brain function. Areas of the brain where this occurred control such functions as problem solving, the ability to think abstractly, and the ability to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously, as well as attention span, impulse control and mood. PR 1/1/00 The American Journal of Psychiatry Jan. 2000 issue

Metropolitan Life Foundation Announces Winners of Awards for Medical Research in AD - Metropolitan Life Foundation on 1/24/00 named the winners of its 14th annual Awards for Medical Research in AD. Douglas Wallace, Ph.D., director of the Center for Molecular Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, was recognized by the awards committee for his pioneering research on the contribution of mitochrondrial defects to neurogenerative disease and AD. A grant of $200,000 will be awarded to his institution for continued support of his research related to AD and he will also receive a $50,000 personal prize. Larry Squire, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and neurosciences at the University of California School of Medicine in San Diego, California, and Mortimer Mishkin, Ph.D., of the cognitive neuroscience laboratory of neuropsychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, were also recognized by the committee for their contributions to the understanding of memory systems in the brain. A grant of $100,000 will be awarded to each of their institutions towards continued research efforts and they will each receive a $25,000 personal prize as well. PR 1/24/00

Diabetes a Significant Risk Factor for Cognitive Decline in Older Women - Older women with diabetes tend to have lower levels of cognitive function and more rapid rates of cognitive decline than their counterparts without diabetes, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. The researchers report that women with diabetes scored significantly lower on three tests of cognitive function at baseline and at 3 and 6 years than women without diabetes. Women with diabetes also showed faster cognitive decline than their counterparts. The researchers say that women with a history of diabetes of more than 15 years "...had a 57% to 114% greater risk of major cognitive decline than women without diabetes." This is not an AD story. Reuters Health 1/25/00 Arch Intern Med 2000;160:141-143,174-180.

Clinton Seeks Biomedical Funding - White House officials reported 1/17/00 that President Clinton will ask Congress for $1 billion more for biomedical research in his upcoming budget and try to loosen congressional restrictions on $4.3 billion more in research money. A White House statement said the increase, if approved, would provide "new funding for research on every major disease,'' including AIDS, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and AD. It will continue work on decoding the human genome and help turn research into real-world practice. By Curt Anderson AP Writer 1/17/00

Senate Approves Final Budget Bill - The Senate gave final approval 11/19/99 to the massive compromise spending bill negotiated with President Clinton, bringing to a close a year of congressional wrangling with the White House and providing both parties with victories they can tout during the 2000 election campaign. Republicans also achieved some of their priorities in the budget battle. The bill passed Friday provides $17.9 billion for research by the National Institutes of Health on cancer, Parkinson's and AD. That was $2 billion more than Clinton requested. By Art Pine and Nick Anderson LA Times Staff Writers 11/20/99

Alzheimer's: Unlocking the Mystery by Geoffrey Cowley
http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/so/a54596-2000jan23.htm

The longer we live, the more likely we are to contract this devastating disease. But recent discoveries are bringing scientists closer than ever to a cure.

How Alzheimer's Lays Siege to the Brain
http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/so/a54600-2000jan23.htm

AD was rare when scientists first identified it a century ago. But life expectancy has increased dramatically since then, and AD incidence has risen accordingly. The U.S. caseload is expected to explode as baby boomers head into their later years.

Coping With the Darkness By Claudia Kalb
http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/so/a54599-2000jan23.htm

Revolutionary new approaches in providing care are helping people with AD stay active and feel productive.

Watching for Warning Signs
http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/so/a54612-2000jan23.htm

Forgetting the date or losing keys may not indicate the onset of AD. But if these common traits worsen, they may form the disease's recognizable pattern.

My Father's Battle With Alzheimer's By Maureen Reagan
http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/so/a54601-2000jan23.htm

You start with a 600-acre ranch and wind up in the den. What I've learned from his struggle.