Word: braine
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When it comes to Alzheimer's disease, there hasn't been much to celebrate in recent years. Efforts to develop a vaccine against the brain disorder have stalled, and no drugs have been able to reverse the slow death of neurons that robs people of their memories and thoughts. For the first time in many years, however, researchers in the field are genuinely excited about the potential for effective drug treatments and helpful new risk factors...
...some of the conference's most exciting papers. Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine reported, for example, that compared with other Alzheimer's patients, those who had diabetes and took insulin plus another anti-diabetes medication to control blood sugar had 80% fewer amyloid plaques - the sticky brain-clogging masses that, together with protein tangles, are the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. Although the mechanism wasn't entirely clear, researchers think the drugs may work by normalizing the brain's communication network of insulin receptors, which goes awry in the Alzheimer's brain, while clearing away the damaging plaques...
...future approaches won't stop with drug treatments. Petersen notes that researchers are also forging ahead with innovative screening tests to identify Alzheimer's patients sooner - before too much deterioration occurs in the brain. Better screens could also potentially identify patients by the specific type of brain buildup - plaques vs. tangles - that is causing them the most severe problems. That kind of triage early on could help doctors target the right patients with the most effective therapies...
Exactly how that drive plays out in the body is still a mystery. There are two theories, Lightfoot says: Genes may affect either the way muscles work - perhaps causing them to use energy more efficiently and preventing fatigue - or some higher-order biochemical circuit in the brain, such as levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine or serotonin. Researchers have examined the muscle tissue of the mice in the study, however, and early data, which has not yet been published, suggests that there's no difference in their function. So the researchers' best guess is that the drive to exercise...
Beeri and her group are already trying to figure out how - and why - the combination therapies might curb plaque formation but leave the tangles alone. One theory is that the drugs normalize the communication network of insulin receptors, which go awry in the Alzheimer's brain, somehow restoring those pathways to as close to normal as possible, while clearing out the damaging plaques that form when the network malfunctions. "Our hypothesis is that with the combination therapy, the gene and protein expression of these Alzheimer's patients might be close to that of normal people who don't have Alzheimer...