Alzheimer's & Dementia News From Medical News Today

Sixty per cent of people think politicians are not doing enough to improve care for older people according to a survey by Age Concern and Help the Aged. The poll also found that eight out of ten adults believe care reform is among the most important issues in the forthcoming election...

Accera, Inc., a biotechnology company delivering breakthrough therapies in central nervous system diseases, announced data which showed that augmentation with ketone bodies significantly improved cognitive function in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. An early feature of AD is region specific declines in cerebral glucose metabolism...

Poughkeepsie Journal: A new report on New York drug prices, "issued by the New York Public Interest Research Group, Consumers Union, the Center for Medical Consumers and AARP, looked at the price of the 10 most popular drugs found in the state's pharmacies provided through a Freedom of Information Law request...

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue is the recipient of the Alzheimer's Association's 2010 Humanitarian Award. The award is given each year to a public official who has made a significant contribution to help those who are struggling with Alzheimer's disease...

According to the Alzheimer's Association's® 2010 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures, African-Americans are about two times more likely and Hispanics are about one and one-half times more likely than their white counterparts to have Alzheimer's and other dementias...

The Cinderella story eventually has a happy ending, but to revelers in the Dimebon story right now the time must feel like five past midnight. Some scientists have considered the sudden transformation of a modest hay fever medicine from Russia into the latest star in the AD drug development arena as a bit of a fairy tale all along...

The population of the UK is ageing. Sixteen per cent of the UK population is 65 or older, and for the first time, there are more people over the age of 65 than there are under the age of 18. This raises a lot of questions on issues such as pension provision, health care and wellbeing...

Adults who have both diabetes and major depression are more than twice as likely to develop dementia, compared to adults with diabetes only, according to a study published in the recent Journal of General Internal Medicine. Dementia is the progressive decline of thinking and reasoning abilities...

The field is abuzz with the word "prevention," but how to pull off this vaunted goal? It's been held back by a strange Catch-22 of cost, time, and biomarker validation. That might change with a bold initiative led by Eric Reiman, Pierre Tariot, and others at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute...

WHAT: National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists investigating how prion diseases destroy the brain have observed a new form of the disease in mice that does not cause the sponge-like brain deterioration typically seen in prion diseases. Instead, it resembles a form of human Alzheimer's disease, cerebral amyloid angiopathy, that damages brain arteries...

A team of scientists from the US and the UK have found a new type of prion disease in mice that damages brain arteries and may help us better understand and treat types of Alzheimer's disease that cause similar damage. You can read a scientific paper about the discovery in the 5 March online issue of the journal PLoS Pathogens...

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Medivation, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDVN) announced results from two Phase 3 trials of the investigational drug dimebon (latrepirdine*) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the CONNECTION trial, dimebon did not meet its co-primary or secondary efficacy endpoints compared to placebo. Co-primary endpoints were measures of cognition and global function...

Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the Quality of Life Technology Center (QoLTC) will embed wireless sensors in the residences of about 50 older adults who live alone to see if they can detect subtle changes in everyday activities that indicate the onset of dementia or physical infirmities...

In an announcement today, Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM) and Medisyn Technologies, Inc...

A study from EPFL's (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) Laboratory of Neuroenergetics and Cellular Dynamics in Lausanne Switzerland, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, may lead to new forms of treatment following a better understanding of how Amyloid-Beta found in cerebral plaques, typically present in the brain of Alzheimer's patients, may lead to neurodegeneration...

Model and presenter Nell McAndrew is calling for people to join her in raising money for people with dementia by running for Alzheimer's Society, Bupa's nominated charity. Nell's grandad, Sam, was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and she will be running in honour of him...

"The Alzheimer's Association is disappointed to learn of the negative results from the Phase III clinical trial of latrepirdine (Dimebon)," said William Thies, Ph.D., Alzheimer's Association Chief Medical and Scientific Officer. "People with Alzheimer's, their families and caregivers desperately need more and better treatment options for this devastating, fatal brain disease...

Researchers have launched a unique project to improve early diagnosis and management of dementia among Deaf people who use British Sign Language (BSL). The research, funded by Alzheimer's Society, will examine how to identify dementia in Deaf people and explore how they might best cope with their condition...

Alzheimer's disease affects an estimated 27 million people worldwide. It is the most common form of age-related dementia, possibly the most feared disease of old age. There is no cure, and the available drugs only help to relieve symptoms without slowing progression of the disease...

Greater purpose of life could significantly reduce a person's chance of developing Alzheimer's disease according to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Researchers in Chicago measured purpose of life of 951 older people who did not have dementia over an average of four years...