Despite Uneven Results, Alzheimer's Research Suggests A Path For Treatment
Excerpt:Brain scans using Amyvid dye to highlight beta-amyloid plaques in the brain. Clockwise from top left: a cognitively normal subject; an amyloid-positive patient with Alzheimer's disease; a patient with mild cognitive impairment who progressed to dementia during a study; and a patient with mild cognitive impairment. It's been a mixed year for Alzheimer's research. Some promising drugs failed to stop or even slow the disease. But researchers also found reasons to think that treatments can work if they just start sooner. Scientists who study Alzheimer's say they aren't discouraged by the drug failures. "I actually think it was a phenomenal year for research," says Bill Rebeck, a brain scientist at Georgetown University. Rebeck is optimistic because during the year, several very different lines of research all began to suggest a new way of thinking about Alzheimer's — that it has to be stopped before it damages the brain.
Keywords:
Alzheimer brain Rebeck mild cognitive impairment disease study drug researchers symptoms way cholesterol molecular scissors heart disease plaques heart attack mutation people cognitively normal subject research positron emission tomography new research tool rare gene mutation study has gone back even further and discovered amyloid new Alzheimer University Brain scans beta-amyloid plaques patient brain scientist promising drugs new cholesterol amyloid-positive patient drug failures Amyvid dye different lines cholesterol levels Drug Administration changes brain changes new way Lilly Plans quicker way Michael Raffi Georgetown University National Institute previous research Neuroscience meeting PET scan Robert VassarPeople:
Bill Rebeck
Overall Sentiment: -0.0343626
Relevance: 0.908736
Sentiment | Quote |
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0.1155 | "I actually think it was a phenomenal year for research," says Bill Rebeck, ... |
-0.286869 | "Once you start to lose a lot of synapses, once you start to lose a lot of neurons, your brain can't recover from that," Rebeck says. ... |
-0.235729 | "Once you start to lose a lot of synapses, once you start to lose a lot of neurons, your brain can't recover from that," Rebeck says. "And so when we start with people who have symptoms of the disease, treating them turns out to be unsuccessful." |
0 | "In the PET scan you can see whether somebody has amyloid in their brain...before [they show] symptoms of the disease. I think that's huge," Rebeck says. ... |
-0.0163582 | "What that says is there's an opportunity, there's a window when if we could stop that amyloid from accumulating, or start to clear it out of the brain, then you could prevent those symptoms from actually ever happening," he says. ... |
0.0809545 | "It took a long time for us to make that connection between cholesterol and heart disease," says Rebeck. |
0.26366 | "It took a long time for us to make that connection between cholesterol and heart disease," says Rebeck. "That's been very successful. It's been very helpful in so many people's lives. We're just [at] earlier stages in studying Alzheimer's disease." |
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Michael Raffi
Overall Sentiment: 0.0154238
Relevance: 0.259007
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0.142735 | "Really the ideal situation is to have checked their cholesterol levels 15 years prior, and seen whether it was elevated, which would imply that they have an elevated risk of having the heart attack, and starting the medication then," Raffi says. ... |
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Robert Vassar
Overall Sentiment: 0.0524691
Relevance: 0.255495
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-0.10677 | "BACE 1 is like a pair of molecular scissors, and what the mutation does is sort of interfere with the way the molecular scissors can cut. It sort of like, dulls the blades," Vassar says. ... |
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Lori Beason-Held
Overall Sentiment: -0.216819
Relevance: 0.250184
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-0.11391 | "Our study has gone back even further and discovered changes in the brain that occur up to 11 years before any symptoms occur in individuals who eventually become cognitively impaired," says Beason-Held. |
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Amyvid
Overall Sentiment: 0
Relevance: 0.21064
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Additional Info:
HealthCondition: Alzheimer
Overall Sentiment: 0.17555
Relevance: 0.855828
HealthCondition: Alzheimer's disease
Overall Sentiment: -0.123635
Relevance: 0.482454
HealthCondition: heart disease
Overall Sentiment: 0
Relevance: 0.316924
Disambiguation: DiseaseOrMedicalCondition | CauseOfDeath | RiskFactor | Disease | OrganizationSectorReferences:
FieldTerminology: gene mutation
Overall Sentiment: -0.182718
Relevance: 0.380006
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Source Webpage: Despite Uneven Results, Alzheimer's Research Suggests A Path For Treatment
Despite Uneven Results, Alzheimer's Research Suggests A Path For Treatment
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The year saw some disappointments in the development of drugs to treat Alzheimer's. But the setbacks were offset by progress in other areas. The upshot from this year's mixed results, some scientists say, is that treatment for Alzheimer's needs to start long before forgetfulness and muddled thinking are apparent.
Source Webpage: Despite Uneven Results, Alzheimer's Research Suggests A Path For Treatment
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