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Alzheimer's disease - a neurospirochetosis. Analysis of the evidence following Koch's and Hill's criteria. Judith Miklossy Correspondence: Judith Miklossy judithmiklossy@bluewin.ch Journal of Neuroinflammation 2011, 8:90 doi:10.1186/1742-2094-8-90 Published: 4 August 2011 Abstract (provisional) It is established that chronic spirochetal infection can cause slowly progressive dementia, brain atrophy and amyloid deposition in late neurosyphilis. Recently it has been suggested that various types of spirochetes, in an analogous way to Treponema pallidum, could cause dementia and may be involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we review all data available in the literature on the detection of spirochetes in AD and...

The blood of patients with the brain disease contains antibodies not found in healthy people. A new blood test diagnoses Alzheimer's disease by sensing molecules produced by the immune systems of people with the neurodegenerative condition. So far, the test has been applied to just a small number of blood samples, but if proven on a larger scale, the assay could help diagnose Alzheimer's disease in combination with other tests, says Thomas Kodadek, a professor of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida. It could also be used to identify patients for trials of experimental Alzheimer's drugs, he...

Psychologist Margaret Gatz explains what 25 years of research have taught her about reducing the risk of dementia. Margaret Gatz, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, is investigating the causes of Alzheimer's disease. To that end, she has studied the health of more than 14,000 Swedish twins for more than 25 years. On 5 August, she will tell the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington DC what the study has taught her about how to reduce risk for the disease. Nature got a preview. What first motivated you to study Alzheimer's disease? Before...

Older people suffering from mild memory and cognition problems may be less likely to progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease if they receive treatment for medical conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, a new study has found. In 2004, researchers at Daping Hospital in Chongqing, China, began following 837 residents ages 55 and older who had mild cognitive impairment but not dementia. Of these, 414 had at least one medical condition that can impair blood flow to the brain. After five years, 298 of the participants had developed Alzheimer’s. Subjects who had had high blood pressure or other vascular...

Wherever it's buried in the body, a disease leaves traces in the blood—or so the thinking goes. But finding these biomarkers, which can help catch the disease early on, has been an exercise in futility, with one promising candidate after another losing its luster once it receives scrutiny. A team of chemists and other researchers now propose a new way to pick up biomarkers with a blood test: by screening for antibodies that the body makes in response to particular diseases. So far, the group has reported results for only a small number of Alzheimer's disease patients. But they are...

Ancient food source may offer neuroprotectionNutritional supplementation with Spirulina, a nutrient-rich, blue-green algae, appeared to provide neuroprotective support for dying motor neurons in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, University of South Florida neuroscientists have found. Although more research is needed, they suggest that a spirulina-supplemented diet may provide clinical benefits for ALS patients. A spirulina dietary supplement was shown to delay the onset of motor symptoms and disease progression, reducing inflammatory markers and motor neuron death in a G93A mouse model of ALS. Spirulina, an ancient food source used by the...

High levels of the so-called "good" cholesterol may lower the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study. In the study, those with high levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the good kind of cholesterol, were 60 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those with lower HDL levels. "The higher your HDL, the more protected you are from Alzheimer's disease, apparently," said study researcher Dr. Christiane Reitz, of Columbia University. The researchers found no evidence that high levels of "bad" cholesterol, known as low-density lipoprotein (LDL), affected a person's risk of Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer’s researchers are obsessed with a small, sticky protein fragment, beta amyloid, that clumps into barnaclelike balls in the brains of patients with this degenerative neurological disease. It is a normal protein. Everyone’s brain makes it. But the problem in Alzheimer’s is that it starts to accumulate into balls — plaques. The first sign the disease is developing — before there are any symptoms — is a buildup of amyloid. And for years, it seemed, the problem in Alzheimer’s was that brain cells were making too much of it. But now, a surprising new study has found that that view...

New research in the FASEB Journal suggests that manipulation of the brain's own immune cells with IL-6 could lead to reversal of Alzheimer's disease pathologyA breakthrough discovery by scientists from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, may lead to a new treatment for Alzheimer's Disease that actually removes amyloid plaques—considered a hallmark of the disease—from patients' brains. This discovery, published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), is based on the unexpected finding that when the brain's immune cells (microglia) are activated by the interleukin-6 protein (IL-6), they actually remove plaques instead of causing them or making them worse. The research...

There is a good deal of debate about the health effects of caffeine, and whether these effects are primarily positive or negative. Caffeine, particularly in coffee, has been studied closely to determine where it may be of benefit, and where it may cause undesirable effects. Health benefits of caffeine Parkinson's disease Parkinson's is caused by the loss of brain cells that produce a chemical messenger called dopamine. According to a researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, people who drink coffee or consume caffeine regularly have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease. The research put forth...

Using a new mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that Alzheimer's pathology originates in Amyloid-Beta (Abeta) oligomers in the brain, rather than the amyloid plaques previously thought by many researchers to cause the disease. The study, which was supported by the "Oligomer Research Consortium" of the Cure Alzheimer Fund and a MERIT Award from the Veterans Administration, appears in the journal Annals of Neurology. "The buildup of amyloid plaques was described over 100 years ago and has received the bulk of the attention in Alzheimer's pathology," said lead author Sam Gandy, MD,...

Bacterial Product Isolated in Soil from Easter Island Rescues Learning, Memory in Alzheimer's Mouse Model Rapamycin, a drug that keeps the immune system from attacking transplanted organs, may have another exciting use: fighting Alzheimer's disease. The drug -- a bacterial product first isolated in soil from Easter Island -- rescued learning and memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, a team from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported on Feb. 23. The study, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offers the first evidence that the drug is able to reverse Alzheimer's-like deficits in an...

New research in the FASEB Journal reports that a novel enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay could be a critical diagnostic tool for the detection of A-Beta oligomers, proteins which cause Alzheimer’s diseaseA new test developed by Japanese scientists may revolutionize how and when physicians diagnose Alzheimer's disease. According to a research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), the new test measures proteins in the spinal fluid known to be one of the main causes of brain degeneration and memory impairment in Alzheimer's patients: high molecular weight A-Beta oligomers. This tool, once fully implemented, would allow physicians to diagnose and treat...

It seemed somewhat unlikely, but in recent years an old Russian hay fever pill had become one of the world’s best hopes for treating the growing epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease. But those hopes were dashed on Wednesday when the drug failed in its first late-stage clinical trial, dealing a blow not only to patients with Alzheimer’s and their families but to the companies developing the treatment — a start-up in San Francisco called Medivation and the world’s largest drug company, Pfizer. The companies said in a statement that the drug, called Dimebon, had shown virtually no effect after six months...

For years, a prevailing theory has been that one of the chief villains in Alzheimer’s disease has no real function other than as a waste product that the brain never properly disposed of. The material, a protein called beta amyloid, or A-beta, piles up into tough plaques that destroy signals between nerves. When that happens, people lose their memory, their personality changes and they stop recognizing friends and family. But now researchers at Harvard suggest that the protein has a real and unexpected function — it may be part of the brain’s normal defenses against invading bacteria and other microbes....

Those who live in industrialized countries have easy access to healthy food and nutritional supplements, but magnesium deficiencies are still common. That's a problem because new research from Tel Aviv University suggests that magnesium, a key nutrient for the functioning of memory, may be even more critical than previously thought for the neurons of children and healthy brain cells in adults. Dr. Inna Slutsky of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine published results of a 5-year probe which has significant implications for the use of over-the-counter magnesium supplements.

Spontaneous refolding of amyloid fibres under mild conditions could provide insight into Alzheimer's disease claim scientists in the US. Amyloids are collections of twisted or misfolded proteins and often develop in the brains of people with a number of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. They have been considered to be the most thermodynamically stable form of protein as very harsh conditions are required to disrupt them. But Igor Lednev and his team at the University of Albany have found amyloid fibres change from one polymorph to another with just mild changes in solution temperature and salinity. Lednev hopes this discovery will provide insight...

Middle-aged could be screened at routine optician's visit A test that can detect Alzheimer's up to 20 years before any symptoms show is being developed by British scientists. The simple and inexpensive eye test could be part of routine examinations by high street opticians in as little as three years, allowing those in middle age to be screened. Dementia experts said it had the power to revolutionise the treatment of Alzheimer's by making it possible for drugs to be given in the earliest stages. The technique, being pioneered at University College London, could also speed up the development of medication...

Watertown, MA—Scientists at Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) and the University of Pennsylvania have found that combining two chemicals, one of which is the green tea component EGCG, can prevent and destroy a variety of protein structures known as amyloids. Amyloids are the primary culprits in fatal brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases. Their study, published in the current issue of Nature Chemical Biology (December 2009), may ultimately contribute to future therapies for these diseases. "These findings are significant because it is the first time a combination of specific chemicals has successfully destroyed diverse forms of amyloids...

Alzheimer's caused by cold sore virus? In a connection that sounds borderline preposterous, links have been accumulating between Alzheimer's disease and cold sores....Cold sores are caused by the herpes simplex virus type 1, a type that should not be confused with herpes symplex virus type 2 which is the cause of genital herpes. A growing body of research, suggests that the HSV-1 may also be responsible for the majority of Alzheimer's cases.... "There's clearly a very strong connection," says British researcher, Ruth Itzhaki, Ph.D., speaking one afternoon in her office at the University of Manchester, in northwestern England. A neurobiologist,...

Enlarge Caffeine treatment removed the beta amyloid plaques from the brains of the Alzheimer's mice. Credit: Photo courtesy of Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Coffee drinkers may have another reason to pour that extra cup. When aged mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease were given caffeine - the equivalent of five cups of coffee a day - their memory impairment was reversed, report University of South Florida researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Back-to-back studies published online today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, show caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of the protein linked to...

In experiments with lab mice especially bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, University of South Florida (USF) researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center ADRC gave the aged animals the equivalent of the caffeine in five cups of coffee a day. The results? Their severe memory impairment was reversed. This study, along with other AD research by the same group of scientists, was just published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Both studies show that caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of beta amyloid (the protein linked to AD) in both the brains and blood of lab rodents who...

STOCKHOLM — Middle-aged people who drink moderate amounts of coffee significantly reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a study by Finnish and Swedish researchers showed Thursday. "Middle-aged people who drank between three and five cups of coffee a day lowered their risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease by between 60 and 65 percent later in life," said lead researcher on the project, Miia Kivipelto, a professor at the University of Kuopio in Finland and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The study, which was also conducted in cooperation with the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki and which...

A diagnostic compound that allows researchers to look into the brains of Alzheimer's patients will be used for the first time to gauge the effects of an experimental therapy for the disease. Called florbetaben, the diagnostic could also provide important insights into the role of beta amyloid, a protein that accumulates into plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease and has been shown to be toxic to nerve cells. The compound is an 18F-radiolabelled tracer that binds specifically to deposits of beta amyloid, and can be measured using positron emission tomography (PET), a nuclear imaging technique which produces a three-dimensional image of...

You shouldn't stay up all night worrying about it, but a new study has found a connection between a lack of sleep and a biomolecule thought to be important in the development of Alzheimer's disease. In both humans and mice, levels of a peptide called amyloid-β rise during waking hours and decline during sleep, researchers have found. They also report that sleep-deprived mice are more prone to developing deposits of amyloid-β, called plaques, like those found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Although far from proven, the finding suggests that sleep disorders could be a risk factor for Alzheimer's. On...

LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. — The ladies in the card room are playing bridge, and at their age the game is no hobby. It is a way of life, a daily comfort and challenge, the last communal campfire before all goes dark. “We play for blood,” says Ruth Cummins, 92, before taking a sip of Red Bull at a recent game. “It’s what keeps us going,” adds Georgia Scott, 99. “It’s where our closest friends are.” In recent years scientists have become intensely interested in what could be called a super memory club — the fewer than one in 200 of...

News From The American Chemical Society, May 13, 200919 May 2009    Advance in detecting melamine-adulterated food Researchers in Indiana are reporting an advance toward faster, more sensitive tests for detecting melamine, the substance that killed at least 6 children and sickened 300,000 children in China who drank milk and infant formula adulterated with the substance. The improved tests may ease global concerns about food safety, the researchers say. Their report is scheduled for the May 27 issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication. In the new study, Lisa Mauer and colleagues note that tests...

Canadian scientists have been inspired by analytical chemistry to attack Alzheimer's disease from all sides. Chris Orvig from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues made multifunctional compounds to target amyloid plaque formation, a possible cause of Alzheimer's disease. Amyloid plaques are protein clusters with metal ions that accumulate between neurons in Alzheimer's patients' brains. Orvig designed his compounds to combat the protein misfolding and metal-peptide interactions involved in amyloid plaque production as well as the oxidative stress that occurs (a condition that damages cells, caused by excess free radicals). 'We aren't 100 per cent sure about the order...

UK and Dutch scientists have mimicked an ancient Chinese culinary technique of preserving eggs to study how proteins cause disease. Erika Eiser from the University of Cambridge and colleagues looked at how proteins in egg whites altered during this preservation process. The Chinese method involves wrapping raw eggs in an alkaline paste of lime, clay, salt, ash and tea and storing these so-called century eggs for several months. Eiser modified the method by incubating a boiled egg in a strong alkaline sodium hydroxide-salt solution for up to 26 days. Hard boiled egg whites become a transparent gel in an alkaline...

Non-infectious form of prion protein could cause brain degeneration. Prion proteins may react with amyloid-(beta) peptides inside the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients.Thomas Deerinck NCMIR/Science Photo Library Non-infectious prion proteins found in the brain may contribute to Alzheimer's disease, researchers have found. The surprising new results, reported this week in Nature1, show that normal prion proteins produced naturally in the brain interact with the amyloid-(beta) peptides that are hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. Blocking this interaction in preparations made from mouse brains halted some neurological defects caused by the accumulation of amyloid-(beta) peptide. It was previously thought that only infectious prion...

Did Grandma seem forgetful at the holiday parties last month? It could be time to put her on a diet. Sharply reducing calories improves memory in older adults, according to one of the first studies of dietary restriction and cognitive function in humans. Research on the benefits of an extremely low-calorie diet stretches back to the 1930s, when scientists found that rats lived up to twice as long when they nibbled less than control animals. Since then, some studies with rodents and nonhuman primates have shown that this spare diet, known as calorie restriction, improves some markers of diabetes and...

Clioquinol inhibits action of the CLK1 aging gene, may alleviate Alzheimer'sRecent animal studies have shown that clioquinol – an 80-year old drug once used to treat diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders – can reverse the progression of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. Scientists, however, had a variety of theories to attempt to explain how a single compound could have such similar effects on three unrelated neurodegenerative disorders. Researchers at McGill University have discovered a dramatic possible new answer: According to Dr. Siegfried Hekimi and colleagues at McGill's Department of Biology, clioquinol acts directly on a protein called CLK-1, often informally...

Talk of the Nation, November 7, 2008 · A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that mice treated with large doses of vitamin B3 performed better on memory tests. Kim Green, one of the authors of the study, explains whether this discovery could have any application for treating Alzheimer's in humans.

... We present a novel computational approach for describing the formation of oligomeric assemblies at experimental concentrations and timescales. We propose an extension to the Markovian state model approach, where one includes low concentration oligomeric states analytically. This allows simulation on long timescales (seconds timescale) and at arbitrarily low concentrations (e.g., the micromolar concentrations found in experiments), while still using an all-atom model for protein and solvent. As a proof of concept, we apply this methodology to the oligomerization of an Abeta peptide fragment (Abeta 21–43). Abeta oligomers are now widely recognized as the primary neurotoxic structures leading to Alzheimer's...

The finding could open the door to improved treatments. Researchers say they've discovered a gene that may make it easier for people to develop Alzheimer's disease, and it could become a target for drug treatments. "This new work not only provides a better understanding of the mechanism leading to the disease, but identifies a risk factor as an important target for therapy," said Philippe Marambaud, an assistant professor of pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and member of an international team of scientists that released its findings Wednesday. Alzheimer's disease, which causes senility and...

Ramona Lamascola thought she was losing her 88-year-old mother to dementia. Instead, she was losing her to overmedication. Last fall her mother, Theresa Lamascola, of the Bronx, suffering from anxiety and confusion, was put on the antipsychotic drug Risperdal. When she had trouble walking, her daughter took her to another doctor — the younger Ms. Lamascola’s own physician — who found that she had unrecognized hypothyroidism, a disorder that can contribute to dementia. Theresa Lamascola was moved to a nursing home to get these problems under control. But things only got worse. “My mother was screaming and out of it,...

The leader of the team that made the discovery, Professor Christopher Rowe of the Austin Hospital in Melbourne, says early diagnosis and treatment presents medical practitioners with the best opportunity to delay the onset of Alzheimer's. "While the discovery is at an experimental stage, this work places Australia at the forefront of neuro-imaging in Alzheimer's disease," Professor Rowe says. A 2004 Access Economics report calculated that if the average age of onset of Alzheimer's was raised by just five months, cumulative savings of A$1.3 billion would be realised by 2020 rising to A$6.6 billion by 2040. Alzheimer's disease is characterised...

SYDNEY, June 20, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Euthanasia provider and activist Dr. Philip Nitschke has released controversial statements that essentially instruct anyone who believes they are suffering from Alzheimer's disease to avoid obtaining a diagnosis in favour of seeking a doctor who can help them commit suicide as quickly as possible. These comments come on the heels of yesterday's New South Wales jury ruling that convicted two women for the "euthanasia" death of a 71-year old Sydney man, Graeme Wylie, in 2006. As reported by the news service, The Age, Shirley Justins, the wife of Wylie, was convicted of manslaughter for...

TAMPA, FL, March 27, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Targeted immune suppression using human umbilical cord blood cells may improve the pathology associated with Alzheimer's disease, a new study in a mouse model of this currently untreatable neurodegenerative condition reports. The study, led by researchers at the University of South Florida, is published online in the peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells and Development (http://www.liebertpub.com/scd).Following a series of low-dose infusions of human umbilical cord blood cells into mice with Alzheimer's-like disease, the amount of amyloid-ß and ß-amyloid plaques - hallmarks of Alzheimer's pathology in the brain - was reduced 62 percent. Amyloid-ß induces...

Differential regulation of dynein and kinesin motor proteins by the microtubule associated protein tau. The Penn group found that dynein, which carries loads towards the interior of the nerve cell, maneuvers around tau; whereas, kinesin, which carries loads towards the outside of the nerve cell, detaches when it encounters tau. Credit: Credit: Ram Dixit, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that proteins carrying chemical cargo in nerve cells react differently when exposed to the tau protein, which plays an important role in Alzheimer’s disease. Dynein and kinesin proteins transport...

As we approach one million PLAYSTATION 3 consoles participating in the Folding@Home program, we continue to improve the FAH client. With the new Firmware v2.1 we also prepared an updated version of FAH, which can soon be automatically downloaded by clicking on the FAH icon. This updated version includes the following new features: If you happen to be one of the people that wants to leave their machine running after they finished their late-night gaming session, but wish to shut it down after a limited period of time, we have a great tip for you: Go to Settings menu, select...

My husband, at 74, is the baby of his bridge group, which includes a woman of 85 and a man of 89. This challenging game demands an excellent memory (for bids, cards played, rules and so on) and an ability to think strategically and read subtle psychological cues. Never having had a head for cards, I continue to be amazed by the mental agility of these septua- and octogenarians. The brain, like every other part of the body, changes with age, and those changes can impede clear thinking and memory. Yet many older people seem to remain sharp as a...

Even seniors fortunate enough to avoid the horrors of Alzheimer's disease typically experience some declines in memory and other cognitive abilities. Little is known about why this happens, but a new study suggests that cognitive declines in healthy older adults may result when brain regions that normally work together become out of sync, perhaps because the connections between them break down. A team led by Harvard neuroscientists Jessica Andrews-Hanna and Randy Buckner used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain activity in 38 young adults, mostly 20-somethings, and 55 older adults, age 60 or above. The researchers focused on...

Scientists reported progress today toward one of medicine’s long-sought goals: the development of a blood test that can accurately diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, and even do so years before truly debilitating memory loss. A team of scientists, based mainly at Stanford University, developed a test that was about 90 percent accurate in distinguishing the blood of people with Alzheimer’s from the blood of those without the disease. The test was about 80 percent accurate in predicting which patients with mild memory loss would go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease two to six years later. Outside experts called the results, published online...

A ruling by the national drug watchdog to limit access to an Alzheimer’s drug has been upheld by the High Court. The drug company Eisai challenged the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) over its guidance that for most patients Eisai’s drug Aricept was not a cost-effective use of NHS resources. This was the first legal challenge to a NICE judgment and, except in one aspect, it was a failure. In the High Court yesterday Mrs Justice Dobbs ruled that on five out of six issues raised by Eisai and the Alzheimer’s Society, the challenge failed. NICE’s decision,...

DEGENERATIVE brain diseases, including Alzheimers, could one day be treated with drugs that can reverse distressing loss of memory, according to a study released Sunday. The very term "memory loss'' could be a misnomer in such cases, suggests the study, published in British journal Nature: that cherished recollection of a first kiss, seemingly destroyed by disease, may have simply been rendered inaccessible by obstructed neural pathways. In laboratory experiments, mice suffering the type of brain damage which in humans typically leads to dementia - robbing victims of the ability to remember past events or even to recognize loved ones -...

Immune Antibodies Penetrate Neurons To Clear Alzheimer's-Linked Amyloid - Discovery Could Advance Treatment For Alzheimer's, Immune Diseases Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have gotten much closer to understanding how immune-based therapies can treat Alzheimer's disease -- by studying how antibodies go inside brain cells to reduce levels of Alzheimer's-linked amyloid peptides that form plaques between neurons. "This internalization and activity of the antibody within the cell was a big surprise and something we really haven't appreciated in neurological medicine. It gives us new hope for the use of immunotherapy against Alzheimer's, while casting intriguing new light on other disease...

A diet rich in a type of omega-3 fatty acid can help prevent Alzheimer's disease, and a newly discovered molecule might block enzymes in the brain that lead to plaque formations -- a hallmark of the progressive brain disorder -- two new studies suggest. In one of those studies, at the University of California, Irvine, scientists used genetically engineered mice and it is reportedly the first to show that an omega-3 fatty acid known as docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA for short, can slow the accumulation of tau, a protein that leads to plaque and tangles in brain tissue seen in...

Ron Reagan, Jr., admitted Monday night that embryonic stem cell research will probably be absolutely useless in the quest to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease - throwing cold water on the big media's campaign to sell the controversial science as medically effective in battling the affliction that killed Reagan's father. "Alzheimer‘s is a disease, ironically, that probably won‘t be amenable to treatment through stem cell therapies," Reagan told MSBC's Chris Matthews. So why have he and his mother, former first lady Nancy Reagan, made stem cell research their cause celeb? "For people to suggest that [Nancy Reagan] shouldn’t support...

A substance found in fish oil may be associated with a significantly reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s and other dementias, researchers reported yesterday. The scientists found that people with the highest blood levels of an omega-3 fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, were about half as likely to develop dementia as those with lower levels. The substance is one of several omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids found in fatty fish and, in small amounts, in some meats. It is also sold in fish oil or DHA supplements. The researchers looked for a reduced risk associated with seven other omega-3 fatty...