Commentary

In an interview with UCI undergraduate students, Chelsea Cox, Associate Director of Eduction for UCI MIND, shares her personal journey with Alzheimer’s disease, her perspective on care and research, and how people – young and old – can get involved in the cause. “…No one should have to spend their final days that way. This experience is what motivated me to get involved in Alzheimer’s research and education. So that hopefully, one day, other people don’t have to go through what my family went through.” Read the full interview on Medium >

On February 11, the FDA issued a statement and 12 warning letters related to an aggressive change in the agency’s regulation of dietary supplements. The statement was outlined in the New York Times. The main objective of the new approach is enhanced protection of consumers from mislabeled and unproven claims about treatment of disease. At the core of the problem are a number of companies that specifically target people with Alzheimer’s disease and people who are concerned about developing Alzheimer’s disease. A list of the companies receiving warning letters, as well as links to the letters, can be found here.

Contributed by Joshua Grill, PhD, Director of UCI MIND Colleagues at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center published a timely critique in JAMA on a concerning and increasing practice in the United States. “Pseudomedicine” is a practice whereby qualified healthcare professionals prescribe supplements or other therapies that are not covered by insurance, and therefore require cash payments, for personal financial gain. Pseudomedicine is especially problematic among older patients and family members concerned about memory loss and desperate for effective therapies to slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Other examples of pseudomedicine include recommendations for brain healthy diet plans…

Contributed by Joshua Grill, PhD, Director of UCI MIND In a new study, colleagues at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University have found that levels of the cerebrospinal fluid protein tau, one of the hallmark pathologies in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is lower in African Americans compared to Whites. This was true both for older participants who did and did not have memory problems. The study is not the first to find such differences between African Americans and Caucasians and it has important implications to a number of important areas of AD research. First, there is a growing movement…

The New York Times recently covered a new clinical trial effort Eli Lilly is undertaking, the TRAILBLAZER-ALZ clinical research study. The study, which UCI MIND investigators are participating in, aims to enroll 375 people with early Alzheimer’s disease. To learn more about the TRAILBLAZER-ALZ study, click here, or contact us at research@mind.uci.edu or call 949.824.0008.

Currently, 2 out of every 3 people with Alzheimer’s disease are women. Last year, UCI MIND began a partnership with Maria Shriver’s Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement. This partnership launched a grant competition focused on understanding the role of sex in Alzheimer’s disease. UCI researchers Sunil Gandhi and Mathew Blurton-Jones have been awarded this year’s $100,000 grant. Their research will focus on the role of microglia in the brains of men and women using induced pluripotent stem cells generated from skin cells donated by UCI ADRC participants, modern mouse models of the disease, and cutting edge microscopy techniques. To learn more >

This week, BioArctic Neuroscience, Esai, and Biogen made headlines when they announced via press release the topline and positive results of their Phase 2a study of the anti-amyloid antibody BAN2401. The press release indicated that the drug “demonstrated statistically significant slowing in clinical decline and reduction of amyloid beta accumulated in the brain” in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. To be sure, this is welcomed news. Too often headlines for Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials are about “flops” and “failures.” So we should take this good news and embrace it. Unfortunately, there remain many questions to which we need answers before we…

Recent scientific reports, one in the journal Neuron and another coming out in the journal Cell, present some intriguing new data indicating a link between human herpes viruses and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Because the majority of AD cases cannot be attributed to genetics alone, there has been keen interest in finding other factors that affect the risk of developing AD. Head trauma and infections are two such factors that have received attention by researchers. With regard to infectious agents, speculation has often centered on the herpes viruses, especially herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV1). Human herpes viruses are neurotropic, which means they...

The role of exercise in reducing or slowing Alzheimer’s disease keeps coming up on headlines. Observational studies like the one in this article suggest that brain health may be different for older adults who exercise versus those who do not. While the results of studies like this one are intriguing, disease modifying effects need to be demonstrated in a larger and more diverse populations using accessible, cost-effective and sustainable programs that have the potential for implementation in a community setting. To address this need, UCI MIND and the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) have partnered with the YMCA of the USA…

As reported in CNN, a new study published in JAMA Neurology indicates that healthy older adults who are excessively sleepy during the day show a greater buildup over time of β-amyloid plaques, a defining brain feature of Alzheimer’s disease, compared to those who are not excessively sleepy. As we describe in our editorial on this article, this study is an important advance in our understanding of how sleep disturbance in general can result in increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Many studies over the past few years, including our own, have linked poor sleep to increased risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease,…

A new study published in JAMA Neurology explored participants’ perspectives on receiving amyloid PET scan results as part of an Alzheimer’s disease prevention clinical trial, the A4 study.  Participants at UCI MIND contributed to this important research, led by investigators at the University of Pennsylvania (read more about the study here). Amyloid PET is a biomarker test that could someday be used to identify people at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease who may benefit from preventative or disease-delaying treatments. Biomarker testing such as amyloid PET is being used more and more in the research setting to identify participants appropriate for Alzheimer’s disease…

By now, most Alzheimer’s researchers have seen the writing on the wall. If we are to realize successful treatments or even a cure for Alzheimer’s disease we must turn our attention from the study of patients who have already developed dementia to those who are in the earliest stages of the disease where presumably, the brain pathology is less extensive and possibly more receptive to intervention. This shift to studying preclinical disease will allow us to determine exactly what the earliest brain changes are and hopefully, develop means to treat, reverse, or even prevent these changes years before the symptoms…

CNN has featured data presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, which offer the latest support to the value of a healthy diet to late life brain function. The study by investigators at UCSF and University of Michigan examined a national cohort for adherence to the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet is associated with lower risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, two conditions linked to Alzheimer's disease. In line with several previous studies, the investigators found that those who eat a diet composed largely of plants and healthy fats (found in fish, nuts and olive oil, for example) are...

Play Video Day 2 at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference featured a poster presentation from Dr. Chuang-Kuo Wu on his research to better understand and diagnose posterior cortical atrophy (video) and a lecture from Dr. S. Ahmad Sajjadi on higher education as a protective factor against cognitive decline in the oldest-old. Over 5,600 researchers and clinicians are in attendance at the conference this year, providing UCI MIND exciting opportunities to learn from and share findings with our global partners in the fight to solve Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

Today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed what researchers at UCI MIND have long known to be true: Alzheimer’s disease is an escalating public health crisis that requires increased attention. The report examined rates of death due to Alzheimer’s disease from 1999 to 2014 and found a staggering 55% national increase over that time. Rates were higher among women than men and among non-Hispanic whites compared to other racial/ethnic populations. However, over this time period Alzheimer's death rates saw a greater increase within minority groups compared to non-Hispanic whites. The report also confirmed that the number of Alzheimer’s deaths is highest in...

UCI MIND investigators Mathew Blurton-Jones, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neurobiology & Behavior, Wayne Poon, PhD, Director of UCI MIND Tissue Repository, and Edsel Abud, MD/PhD student, have created a method to generate brain cells called microglia using human skin cells. Here, they discuss their findings and what it means for Alzheimer's disease research in an interview with Chelsea Cox, Associate Director of Education: What is microglia and what role does it play in Alzheimer's disease? Poon: Microglia are the immune cells of the brain. They play a big role in the inflammation of the brain that occurs in Alzheimer’s disease. How can...

On April 6, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) partially reversed an earlier decision to halt direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing by the company 23andMe, a personal genomics company based in Silicon Valley. The new decision approves the company to provide “genetic health risk reports” for 10 diseases, including 8 rare disorders—Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, Celiac Disease, Early-Onset Primary Dystonia, Factor XI Deficiency, G6PD Deficiency, Gaucher Disease, Hereditary Hemochromatosis, and Hereditary Thrombophilia—and two common age-related neurological disorders—Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). After age, the strongest risk factor for AD is genetics. The e4 allele of apolipoprotein E (APOE) is by…

Letters: A quick cure for Alzheimer’s? OC Register, March 29, 2017 Re: “Is Alzheimer’s treatment of injecting stem cells into the brain a breakthrough or quackery?” [News, March 5]: The Register recently reported on a local neurosurgeon who is injecting liposuctioned stem cell serum into the brain of a patient with Alzheimer’s disease for $10,000 per treatment. The neurosurgeon says the patient is improving…