Study: Hormones may ward off dementia

NF Reporter · 05-03-2007, 02:42 AM

AP - New research suggests that hormone therapy taken soon after menopause may help protect against the mental decline of dementia, even though it raises that risk in elderly women.

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waltky · 12-10-2007, 08:43 PM

HBP-dementia link...

High blood pressure linked to dementia
Mon., Dec. 10, 2007 WASHINGTON - Hypertension leads to mild cognitive impairment, new research suggests

Quote:

Elderly people with high blood pressure may be more likely to develop thinking and learning problems that can lead to dementia, researchers said on Monday. Hypertension was linked to one of two types of mild cognitive impairment, a condition that can foreshadow the development of dementia, but not the type strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the study published in the journal Archives of Neurology.

People with mild cognitive impairment can have difficulties with language, memory, attention span or other mental functions significant enough to be noticeable to other people and to be detected in tests. One type significantly affects memory, and the other does not. The impairment is not enough to interfere with daily life and the person does not show other symptoms of dementia.

The elderly people with high blood pressure in this study often had a form of mild cognitive impairment that can be a precursor to vascular dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. It is often associated with stroke. High blood pressure raises the risk for stroke.

“It looks like hypertension leads to a cognitive impairment which is actually not really memory impairment but impairment in other cognitive domains,” in particular, language and the ability to perform familiar tasks, Dr. Christiane Reitz of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

More High blood pressure linked to dementia - Heart health - MSNBC.com

waltky · 11-16-2008, 10:42 PM

Dementia autopsies revealing some clues...

Sharp-witted elderly shed insight on dementia
Sun., Nov. 16, 2008 : Autopsy analysis of ‘super aged’ brains shows fewer protein tangles

Quote:

People who manage to keep a razor-sharp memory well into their 80s appear to have fewer fiber-like tangles of a protein linked with Alzheimer's than those who age normally, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. Lower levels of this protein, known as tau, appear to be a critical factor in maintaining memory skills, they said. "It was always assumed that the accumulation of these tangles is a progressive phenomenon through the aging process," Changiz Geula of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a statement.

"But we are seeing that some individuals are immune to tangle formation and that the presence of these tangles seems to influence cognitive performance," said Geula, who is presenting his findings at a Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington. While most studies of memory and aging involve people with some form of cognitive decline, Geula studied the so-called "super-aged," or those who maintain sharp cognitive skills in advanced age. The researchers studied the brains of five deceased people considered super-aged because of their high scores on memory tests at age 80, and compared them to the brains of elderly individuals who had no signs of dementia.

They found far fewer tau tangles in those who had sharp memories than those with normal memories for their age. Curiously, the number of sticky plaques made of beta amyloid — considered a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease — was about the same in both groups. While tau protein accumulates inside brain cells, forming fibrous tangles that eventually cause the cell to burst, beta-amyloid plaques accumulate outside the brain cell, disrupting cell-to-cell communication.

Alzheimer's disease shows plaques and tangles

waltky · 12-08-2008, 07:10 AM

Cold sore link to Alzheimer's...

Cold sores 'an Alzheimer's risk'
Monday, 8 December 2008 - Catching a cold sore puts you at risk of Alzheimer's disease, mounting evidence suggests.

Quote:

The herpes virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the protein plaques that accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer's, scientists have shown. On the plus side, the latest discovery by the University of Manchester team may mean antiviral drugs used to treat cold sores could also prevent dementia. The findings are published in the Journal of Pathology. "This could lead to new treatments for Alzheimer's, based on existing antiviral agents" - Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer's Research Trust

Professor Ruth Itzhaki and colleagues found DNA evidence of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 in 90% of plaques in Alzheimer's disease patients' brains. They had previously shown that HSV1 infection of nerve-type cells in mice leads to deposition of the main component of the plaques - beta amyloid. And that the virus is present in the brains of many elderly people and that in those people with a specific genetic factor, there is a high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Taken together, the researchers say the findings strongly implicate the cold sore-causing virus as a root cause of Alzheimer's dementia. Professor Itzhaki said: "We suggest that HSV1 enters the brain in the elderly as their immune systems decline and then establishes a dormant infection from which it is repeatedly activated by events such as stress, immunosuppression, and various infections."

Cell damage