The findings contradict a long-held notion that memory loss is a normal part of aging, the U.S. team said [...]]]> Mild memory problems in older people are often excused as “senior moments,” but a new study has found the same changes in the brain that cause severe dementia may also be responsible for those memory lapses.

The findings contradict a long-held notion that memory loss is a normal part of aging, the U.S. team said on Wednesday.

“We don’t think that just because you are old, a problem in thinking and memory is normal and should be ignored. We think it’s an actual sign of disease,” said Robert Wilson, a researcher at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Neurology.

Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, is a fatal brain disease in which people gradually lose their memory and their ability to reason and care for themselves.

Only an autopsy can confirm the brain changes used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Short of that, most patients have to take a battery of memory tests administered by specialists.

Wilson’s findings are the latest from a long-running study of 350 Catholic nuns, priests and brothers who were given memory tests each year for up to 13 years.

When they died, their brains were examined. Pathologists looked specifically for tau, a toxic protein that forms tangles in the brain linked with Alzheimer’s disease.

They also checked for evidence of strokes and for Lewy bodies – an abnormal protein in nerve cells that can cause a form of dementia called Lewy body disease.

Patients who showed no sign of memory loss also had clean brains. In the patients with memory troubles, they tended to develop gradually, but then accelerated in the last four to five years of life.

“What we’re saying is the brain changes that are mainly responsible for Alzheimer’s and other dementias also seem to be mainly responsible for very mild early changes in memory and thinking,” Wilson said in a telephone interview.

Many experts believe Alzheimer’s starts about 10 years before the disease is diagnosed. Wilson said his findings lend more credence to that theory.

Wilson said if people are worried about memory changes, they could get tested. But individuals will have to weigh that decision carefully because currently, there are no drugs that can alter the progression of Alzheimer’s, which affects more than 26 million people globally.

Researchers are working on new ways to diagnose dementia based on protein biomarkers in blood and spinal fluids, or new imaging agents, in the hopes of developing new drugs that can keep the disease from progressing.

Article from http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2010/09/15/eline/links/20100915elin013.html and http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/WNL.0b013e3181f39adc.

To try to answer that question, the National Institutes of Health sponsored the court, appointing a jury of 15 medical scientists with [...]]]> The scene was a kind of science court. On trial was the question “Can anything — running on a treadmill, eating more spinach, learning Arabic — prevent Alzheimer’s disease or delay its progression?”

To try to answer that question, the National Institutes of Health sponsored the court, appointing a jury of 15 medical scientists with no vested interests in Alzheimer’s research. They would hear the evidence and reach a judgment on what the data showed.

For a day and a half last spring, researchers presented their cases, describing studies and explaining what they had hoped to show. The jury also heard from scientists from Duke University who had been commissioned to look at the body of evidence — hundreds of research papers — and weigh it. And the jury members had read the papers themselves, preparing for this day.

The studies included research on nearly everything proposed to prevent the disease: exercise, mental stimulation, healthy diet, social engagement, nutritional supplements, anti-inflammatory drugs or those that lower cholesterol or blood pressure, even the idea that people who marry or stay trim might be saved from dementia. And they included research on traits that might hasten Alzheimer’s onset, like not having much of an education or being a loner.

It is an issue that has taken on intense importance because scientists recently reported compelling evidence that two types of tests, PET scans of Alzheimer’s plaque in the brain and tests of spinal fluid, can find signs of the disease years before people have symptoms. That gives rise to the question: What, if anything, can people do to prevent it?

But the jury’s verdict was depressing and distressing. So far, nothing has been found to prevent or delay this devastating disease, which ceaselessly kills brain cells, eventually leaving people mute, incontinent, unable to feed themselves, unaware of who they are or who their family and friends are.

Continue reading more from this article at the New York Times online.

The report, which examines the current trajectory of Alzheimer’s based on [...]]]> A new report from the Alzheimer’s Association, Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer’s Disease: A National Imperative shows that in the absence of disease-modifying treatments, the cumulative costs of care for people with Alzheimer’s from 2010 to 2050 will exceed $20 trillion, in today’s dollars.

The report, which examines the current trajectory of Alzheimer’s based on a model developed by the Lewin Group for the Alzheimer’s Association, also shows that the number of Americans age 65 and older who have this condition will increase from the 5.1 million today to 13.5 million by mid-century.

“We know that Alzheimer’s disease is not just ‘a little memory loss’ — it is a national crisis that grows worse by the day,” said Harry Johns, president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association.

“Alzheimer’s not only poses a significant threat to millions of families, but also drives tremendous costs for government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.”

Read more about the cost of Alzheimer’s.